Node Of Evil - Fair And Balanced Reporting

2008-10-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

The Audacity Of A Blowout

We are heartened here at the Node to see how well Obama is doing in the polls. If you take Bush's approval numbers, and then consider that McCain has spent the majority of the campaign running, essentially, for Bush's third term, then it's easy to see why. The "troopergate" report is now out (you can read it here) and the comparisons to past Bush administration malfeasance are obvious. McCain and Palin and Bush are all of the same cloth, products of the discredited Rove political machine. That machine was destined to fail, and I believe it will do so mightily in this election. It is beyond comprehension to me that anyone associated with Rove got any sort of business doing politics after 2006 -- that election foreshadowed this one, and to believe that somehow the Rove team could polish its own turds (Bush's nickname for Rove is "Turd blossom") is the definition of insanity (doing the same thing twice and expecting different results). Nevertheless McCain's judgment was faulty once again and he relied on a discredited political operation to run his campaign.

And so (we hope) onward to victory. Unless McCain burns down the house that Rove built, dumps Palin, and rebuilds his campaign from the bottom up in record time I don't see a way for him to win this.

Obama, on the other hand, has run one of the best Democratic campaigns that I've ever witnessed. I was watching his wife on the Daily Show the other night and it was incredible. She's obviously a real person (I haven't actually seen Cindy McCain on anything, so perhaps she has the same sort of easy style about her) but with an incredible amount of political acumen. I think her turn as First Lady could become the lead-in to her turn as Commander in Chief (assuming she'd even want the job). They are, essentially, the Clintons squared minus the negatives. So here's to eight years of sanity. Heaven knows we could use it.

2008-09-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

Why I Support Barak Obama for President

Once again, the Republican party has made the decision for President blindingly simple. Do you:

a.) Vote for the ticket that includes a soon-to-be indicted first-term governor of one of the smallest states in the Union (with a population of about 700,000) and is headed by Mr. Keating Five himself?

or

b.) Vote for the ticket that has real foreign policy experience and chops and is headed by a man who knows a thing or two about dealing with people.

To me the choice is clearer than any other election I can remember, with the possible exception of Kerry v. Bush in 2004. On character, priorities, policy, likability, philosophy, and just about every other scale of measurement Obama comes out so far ahead of McCain that it's not even a real question. I've mentioned to others that it's like choosing between having a real person as President or a watermelon (or a pig wearing lipstick).

It is truly sad to see that McCain has ossified into a weird combination of Joe Lieberman and George W Bush. I thought he was a good choice (for a Republican, anyways) in 2000 and felt that the Rovian tactics used against him in the primaries were shameful in the extreme. It seems that McCain was shocked and awed enough by those tactics to employ them himself in this campaign. The result has not been pretty, and I would be very surprised if his political career survives after this election. He's told a string of lies a mile long, only surpassed by those told by Palin (who's set something of a land speed record in that regard, telling more lies in the last week and a half than anyone who's run for political office that I can remember). George W Bush is a front-man for a cadre of thugs and nutjobs who've stripped everything decent from the office of President and sold it out wholesale to the highest bidder. Joe Lieberman lost his primary, won reelection as a Democratic-leaning independent and then, after Obama campaigned for his reelection, endorsed John McCain. Political backstabbing of that nature bespeaks character and judgment flaws that are beyond what we usually find in politicians. The fact that John McCain has adopted the most odious aspects of both their characters makes him unacceptable as President.

Thankfully we have an excellent candidate in Barak Obama. He is green, arguably almost as green as Palin. However, having spent the last few weeks interviewing candidates for jobs at my current employer, it's easy to see that he'd be a quick study. Like Clinton, he has the kind of mind that thrives on the challenges you face as President. He also has a stellar record of personal character and family values. Certainly better than McCain, who divorced his first wife after she became a quadriplegic to marry a wealthy beer heiress. Obama is actually concerned with the lives of regular people and gets that America faces real economic challenges. More importantly, he has a plan that addresses those challenges in a way that is fair and clear-headed.

Joe Biden, as I've stated above, has a long history of foreign policy experience and the kind of mental toughness that comes with it. If the Cheney administration is any indicator, America seems to be o.k. with having a very active Vice President who is often practically running our foreign policy. In Joe Biden's case, that's not a bad thing. While I don't necessarily agree with Biden's stances on every issue (for instance, I disagreed strongly with his idea for "partitioning" Iraq), he does do many other things right (I agreed with his diagnosis in that speech of the challenges we faced in Iraq). Enough so that I have full confidence in his ability to give sound advice and perform whatever functions he needs to perform in that arena.

I therefore wholeheartedly support Obama/Biden and will do whatever I can (however small those efforts may be) to ensure that they win in November. We need a real President.

2008-05-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Wag The Country

It feels a bit like I've awaken from a dream and found that, actually, everyone else was dreaming and I'm the one who's awake. That's not really true -- people know what's going on in this country. Nevertheless, the Great Reckoning that laid in wait for the Bush Administration and all those who've enabled it to pursue its crimes is upon us. Now is the season (and possibly for some months to come) when we finally drain the pus from our national sores. Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir has sparked much more "interest" in the idea that the Bush Administration put on a dog-and-pony show for the American people to hoodwink them into supporting the war in Iraq. Of course many of us have suspected and/or known that this was the case for some time. If you've ever witnessed "real" debate, the flaccid one-sided affair that took place on television before the war was obviously a farce. Slowly, over time, various news media personalities (Katie Couric, Jessica Yellin, Ashleigh Banfield, and now Scott McClellan) have stated openly what we all knew was happening. Here's a basic summary:

1.) The Bush Administration crafted and delivered a propaganda package for selling the war. This was a multi-faceted campaign that covered a pretty vast expanse of our media landscape. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox -- they were all part of it. So were the Washington Post, the New York Times, and most of the weekly magazines (like Time and Newsweek).

2.) The executives at those media concerns knowingly caved to pressure, both from the Administration and what they perceived to be happening in our culture, to cheer-lead for the war and present positive stories about Bush and his initiatives. This "caving" included editing news stories to make them sound less critical of the administration, not allowing war dissenters to be on television without being "balanced" by at least one or two war supporters (while war supporters could appear alone), and spiking stories altogether if they didn't cast a positive light on all of these proceedings. All the while they denied what was going on and tried their best to marginalize anyone who dared to suggest otherwise.

3.) The White House used all branches of the Federal Government under its control to push a Republican political agenda. This included things such as providing briefings to agency administrators on how grant money could be spent to "help" Republican candidates, providing lucrative contracts for key political contributors, and firing or demoting people who were not willing to pursue this political agenda.

The scary thing about all of this is people have come to accept it as standard operating procedure. It is not. Government doesn't and shouldn't normally run like this. We can be cynical about what's going on currently, but it's important to realize that there are laws against much of this behavior. Real laws with real consequences if they're broken. Ask Bob Ney, for instance, about the consequences of government wrongdoing. Or "Duke" Cunningham. Or numbers of other former government employees (Dusty Foggo, the number 3 in charge of the CIA, was sentenced for bribery) who're now doing serious time or defending themselves against serious charges (a-la Tom Delay, John Dolittle, Ted Stevens, etc). Thankfully, while the news media has completely dropped the ball, the Justice Department and other areas of government are alive and functioning properly. They're doing their job so our government is free from corruption.

Getting us to lose our determination to keep government both clean and accountable is one of the primary goals of the Bush Administration and its cohorts. They don't want us to find out about what's been done in our name -- torture, wide-scale domestic surveillance, cronyism, and a whole host of other ills. They will succeed if we allow ourselves to just "accept" that this is the status quo. That government is, by its nature, corrupt. The truth is, government is only as corrupt as we allow it to be. So don't be fooled.

2008-03-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Religion of Evil

Mother Jones gives us plenty to think about today:

The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the "spiritual desperation" of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual "culture" ("homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree"), the "abortion industry," and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.

In a chapter titled "Islam: The Deception of Allah," Parsley warns there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization." He continues:

"I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."

If you've ever wondered why we should fear a McCain Presidency, this is why. The same elements backed George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004; now McCain has thoroughly bought into their rhetoric. He doesn't say so openly, but he's been courting the support of pastors like Parsley and I doubt that he could ditch them if, somehow, they helped him get elected as President.

With respect to the so-called "war on terror", this is one of the groups of people who support the Bush administration's current policies. Parsley, Hagee, et. al. believe that Islam and Christianity are on a crash course, and that both are duking it out for supremacy amongst the world's religions. This hooey is exactly the sort of thing that we don't want influencing foreign policy. In the Bush administration (and, I believe, in a McCain administration) it would. And, precisely because Republicans are running out of safe harbors. As independents and moderate Republicans are fleeing the sinking ship that is the Bush administration, they're also stripping the party of its moderate elements. What's left is a mixture of the religious nuts (anybody who believes in a global war with Islam is nuts), gung-ho Iraq war supporters, and various elements of big business who profit from these schemes.

Just this week there is another "moderate" who's jumping ship -- admiral Fallon. The administration has also gone to great lengths to both deep-six the NIE that stated Iran wasn't anywhere close to having a nuclear weapon and a report out this week saying that there were no connections between Hussein and Al-Qaeda. All of these are bad signs; they point in the direction of a Bush administration bent on forging ahead with its policies come hell or high water.

As I commented a few posts below, the only thing that may have a chance of helping Republican electoral chances in November would be a war with Iran. Could such a thing still be in the works? It's been hinted at over and over again that a conflict with Iran is in the pipeline. Every time, however, there's been some voice of moderation that's gained the day and prevented the U.S. from going to war. I hope we don't run out of those voices, because the combination of religiously-fueled anti-Iranian sentiment and oil interests and whatever it is that Cheney is thinking is a lethal mix that will further destroy our country. This presidency can't be over fast enough. And, McCain can't lose fast enough; I don't think we can afford to take chances with him considering his bedfellows.

And so I continue to be apprehensive -- these are not good signs. I feel a bit better about the chances of a Democrat winning the White House in November, but I don't feel well at all about a.) a victory by McCain, b.) the Republicans still in Congress (who are increasingly indebted to the same people being courted by McCain), and c.) what the Bush administration will do between now and next January.

2008-01-23T23:23:00.000-08:00

Apprehension

Even though I know the story is going to end "well", I often get to feeling a bit anxious towards the end of some TV shows. TV is a relatively recent addition to my routine, and I'm hoping its grasp is tenuous. I'm fairly easily moved by dramatic situations so I try to limit exposure, it's not fun feeling uncomfortable. Anyways, point being that I feel this way now about the upcoming election.

There's a lot at stake in American politics because we're at the edge of a precipice. For better or worse the Republicans have succeeded in achieving Grover Norquist's dream; the Government is now "small" enough to be drown in a bathtub. I'm not talking about physical size, necessarily, but rather our preception of government. Republican politicans are crooks (at least a lot of current Republicans are) so we mistrust any politician. Especially Congressmen. They don't do themselves any favors by letting the Bush Administration run roughshod over their wishes. Democrats in control of Congress (a situation that I gave thanks for only a couple of posts down) have done nothing to prove that they deserve to be in the majority. It's business as usual, and it so happens that that business is about destroying our government. Republicans do it whenever they're in power. Democrats do no service by aiding and abetting.

I believe the government is resillient. At least it's proved to be so through countless crises. Somewhere in the back of my mind I believe that it will make it through. We will recover from the cyst that is the modern Republican party and reconstruct what could be (maybe it never was?) a decent government structure. One that's mostly free of partisan motivations, which doesn't engage in highly damaging doublespeak, and is generally concerned with doing the right thing, not negating its own existence. So that part of me thinks this will end "well".

But so much could happen between now and November. A McCain candidacy could potentially cloudy the waters. Although the leadership of his tribe abhors him, it appears that he's still popular amongst those who call themselves "Republicans". As Joe Lieberman demonstrated there are enough Democratic voters out there who don't get what's going on, who don't grasp the wholesale destruction that's happening before our very eyes. Unity08 is close to dead, Bloomberg isn't that stupid (or I don't think he is), so the next best thing is McCain for those who just want to "get along".

A reminder, then, is in order; the other party we're trying to "get along" with doesn't want government to be successful. They want reasons to cut back on spending, to farm out every last function to private companies, and to reduce the "bureaucracy" (which is often quite efficient) to a sullen shell of its former self. They use shopworn devices to attack various social programs. The phrase "Socialized Medicine" has forced out any talk about establishing really universal healthcare among the Democratic candidates, a crying shame considering how much good it could do for the country. Illegal immigrants are attacked as terrorists. I will be frank, here, that's exactly how they (some voices in the modern Republican party) want us to view the War on Terrorism. That ill-defined catch-all phrase can be twisted a thousand ways, and its already been used to demonize immigrants (both legal and illegal). Just like the term "socialized" has long outlived the Cold War, so too will the detrimental association of "terrorist" and "terrorism". These are the people who we're supposed to "get along" with. No thanks.

And why not try to "get along"? Because ceeding more ground in this fight will destroy our country. At a time when the economy is sure to see rough water for at least a year, when the government has all but openly declared its incompetence, and many in the media think we're living in 1969 with respect to partisan politics, we cannot afford to screw up. We cannot afford a weak government that everyone mistrusts. We can't afford to spend more time and treasure in Iraq, let alone in Iran. I'd say we are at our weakest point since World War II as a nation, both economically and militarily. It will take a herculean effort to dig ourselves out of this hole. And only a Democrat at this point in history has any chance of digging.

And so I'm apprehensive. I don't know if I'll be watching the coming events with "interest" so much as "wariness". These are going to be rough times, so hold on to your hats.

2007-04-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

The Myth of American Power

A thought I've had recently, and I'm fairly sure I've commented on this before but it's something I want to emphasise: the U.S. has very little actual power to influence the course of events in other countries by means of military intervention. That might seem to some to be a radical statement, but the truth is that without major orchestration on the part of a good portion of the world (a-la World War II), history can't be changed by interventions of the type we're doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. It can be delayed, and I think we're seeing that most sharply in Afghanistan where the Taliban are slowly retaking the country, but ultimately it can't be moved out of its course.

Think of the mathematical concept of limits. A "limit" is an approximation of what the output of a function will look like when analyzed over a set (which can be finite or infinite) of input values. In some cases functions have well-defined limits, in others there is no limit (i.e. the numbers keep growing and growing) or the limit could be zero. To me, history is a function that looks chaotic when analyzed up-close or over a "finite" period of time, but when you consider much larger chunks of time the chaos averages itself out. Right now, the U.S. presence in Iraq is one of these chaotic finite chunks of history. But over the long-term, the gentle and subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) influence of local politics, not U.S. military power, will determine the course of its history. I don't know enough about Iraq's history to say what the "limit" of that function is, but I do know that regardless of how much military effort we put into it, Iraq will still largely be the same country after we leave.

This has always been the case, although again and again various administrations have failed to see that their military actions don't really affect the politics at work in a country. Russia is largely the same country now under Putin that it was under Communism, there are just different names and different political ideals obscuring that fact somewhat. Latin America and Africa contain numerous examples of countries where U.S. military aid or intervention did little to change local politics, and after the dust settled they continued on in their course.

I believe people can change history, but it can't be done through military intervention. Rather, local politics must take precedence and that's the only viable framework for real change. How Al-Maliki is doing politically is vastly more important to the stability and future of Iraq than our "surge". It is also the reason why I support a full withdrawl of U.S. troops as soon as possible. The political and real-world damage caused by their presence greatly outweighs the transitory benefits of the occupation. And, in the end, it won't matter much. Once we withdraw, the local political process can come to the fore. It may be messy, but allowing Iraq to pursue its own political history without military influence is a far better option then delaying the inevitable and causing undue bloodshed in the process. And we as a country would do well to understand the very real limits on the effectiveness of military power to affect political change.

2007-04-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

We're entering an interesting time in the formerly-known-as "War on Terrorism". I think most people now understand that the Bush administration's fixation with Terrorism isn't about beating the Terrorists. Or, if it ever was, that goal has wildly morphed into finding political fodder to prop up sagging Republican prospects in the 2008 elections. As such, I consider domestic politics to be largely related. There are questions, for instance, about opposition to Nancy Pelosi's recent trip to Syria originating in the White House. Over at Talking Points Memo they're looking into this aspect of the "scandal", which I put in quotes because obstensibly the outcry over her visit to Syria is all about how her "diplomacy" is undercutting the President. Apparently Pelosi delivered a message from Ehud Olmert to Bashir Assad, letting the Syrians know that Israel doesn't plan to attack Syria in the event that the U.S. attacks Iran. Then, after senior Israeli officials said as much before her trip in Ha'aretz, Olmert's office is now denying that they told her to say anything of the sort.

TPM rightly asks "what's going on here?" They focus mostly on whether or not the White House sparked the smear campaign against Pelosi. What I'm interested in is what this says about a possible attack on Iran. I think it's very likely, and it will probably come at such a time as to be most advantageous politically to the White House. That's hard to imagine in our current climate, but considering how crass many of the politically-motivated machinations have been, it can't be ruled out. Certainly the Israelis are concerned enough to be sending out the message that they won't try to expand an attack against Iran to a region-wide conflict. Quite frankly, considering the domestic political situation about the only thing that could forestall a Democratic landslide in 2008 is the instigation of a war much larger than the one we're currently fighting in Iraq.

2006-11-14T17:10:00.000-08:00

Giving Thanks

Quoting Hendrik Hertzberg:

'. . . It has been obvious for some time that, as President of the United States, George W. Bush is in very far over his head. He does not know how to use power wisely. He will now have a Democratic Congress to restrain him, and, perhaps, to protect him—and us—from his unfettered impulses. This may not be the Thanksgiving he was looking forward to, but the rest of us have reason to be grateful.'

I haven't posted for awhile, quite frankly too much has been in play politically in the U.S. for me to say anything useful about the "war on terrorism". Or definitively -- with Congress now changing hands and Bush II stuck with that for his last two years in office it's time to welcome the twilight of the GWOT. And that, perhaps, is the only thing I can put forth with any degree of confidence; that the current strategy for fighting terrorism is at an end. And good riddance. One thing that I hope drops with the new year will be the silly rhetorical phrases which have been employed for framing the debate in the U.S. over what to do about terrorism. Bush may use them now and then (he still is, after all, everything that Hertzberg says he is and more), but they'll no longer hold sway on the national discussion as they have in the past. So, what will the next evolution of the fight against terrorism look like? If it's based on decent policy decisions, then this blog will have outlived its usefulness. I certainly hope so, as there are issues more important than terrorism to deal with. I won't stop blogging, but hopefully this place will need a makeover. Let us all hope that the Democrats deliver on the promise of their recent victories.

2006-07-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

Here's an attitude distinctly missing from our own national conversation about the "war on terror":

'Most residents proclaimed themselves determined to stay despite the rocket volleys coming from over the border. Abraham Farej, 56, the father of 22-year-old Ariel, who was injured by a Katyusha yesterday as he slept at home, said his family, originally Jews from Syria, had been in the city for 11 generations and proclaimed: "It doesn't matter if there are 50,000 Katyushas. People here are tough."'

(source: The Independent)

If you ask me, in a war on "terror" the winners are those who refuse to be afraid.

2006-06-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?"

It bears repeating that most of the folks who've been singled out by the Bush administration as boogeymen are just that -- they pose little to no real threat to the U.S. but serve as handy political tools for whipping up support for this administration's domestic policy priorities. The sooner folks realize this the sooner we can get down to the business of going after real, as opposed to politically useful, threats.

2006-06-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

What I learned about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by reading the Independent:

1.) Zarqawi was a common criminal from Jordan before the war.
2.) His main target was Iraqi Shias. Few U.S. troops were actually killed or injured by Zarqawi's attacks.
3.) The U.S. created his popularity, and he used it to great personal benefit. His newfound popularity also benefited the U.S. Colin Powell's mention of Zarqawi in February of 2003 (during his speech to the U.N.) as the link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida made him an anti-American symbol around the Arab world. This in turn led to his founding of a Sunni resistance movement after the U.S. invaded Iraq and made it easy for him to get assistance. By raising his profile, the U.S. attempted to give the impression that the "resistance" to the invasion came mostly from outside of Iraq when the opposite was (and is) true.
4.) At the time of Powell's mention of Zarqawi he was not a member of al-Qa'ida. He had ties to the organization (he went to Afghanistan to train with al-Qa'ida in 1999) but did not link his resistance movement with al-Qa'ida until after the start of the war.
5.) After Hussein's capture in 2003, Zarqawi garnered all of the blame for what was happening in Iraq. This empasis on Zarqawi's role was part of a deliberate psyops campaign by the U.S. military to raise his profile and further link al-Qa'ida and Iraq in the minds of Americans.

We are glad al-Zarqawi is dead. He was a potent force in the anti-Shia movement and did much to ratchet up tensions between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. However, the U.S. provided much assistance to him by making him the boogeyman after the death of Hussein. And from the standpoint of U.S. policymakers, Zarqawi played an important role in selling the war to American citizens.

We suspect there will be more boogeymen, more faces for decks of cards as the amorphous "al-Qa'ida" presence morphs into something else. 9/11 is far enough behind us that the Administration can no longer rely on it to provide political cover for the Iraq war. The new boogeyman will probably not be chosen for his or her ties to al-Qa'ida. Rather, the new boogeyman will be born of some other politically useful threat. It will be interesting to see the latest addition to the long and winding line of American nemises. We began with Osama Bin Laden, which morphed to the Taliban, which morphed to Saddam Hussein, which morphed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'll make a prediction and say that next one will have "significant" links to Iran and provide a convenient political platform for promoting the invasion of Iran. If there are any al-Qa'ida links at all, they will only be trumpeted for sake of continuity. But we shall see, perhaps domestic political concerns will produce a nemesis that's located closer to home.

2006-05-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

I agree. Bush's policies are more likely to create a terror backlash here at home (and thus a domestic terror threat) than those of any other president in our history. And he only has himself to blame -- he cannot see how his "war on terrorism" could inspire a reaction that is much worse than the attacks he uses to justify it. And while we're witnessing this backlash in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have yet to really see it here at home. I think the time is quickly approaching when that will change.

2006-04-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

New Hersh:

'There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That’s the name they’re using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'"

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"'

I don't know what they're smoking, either. It's definitely not the peace pipe.

2006-03-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

I've often heard that white is right
you better believe black is alright too
and so is blue and green and yellow
what difference should it make to you

what I want to know is
what color have you painted peace
what color is harmony

these times we've got on us just ain't too hip
I know you got your thing and I've got mine
but we've been judging people by colors
maybe we should all be color blind

what I want to know is
what color have you painted peace
what color is harmony

there's a saying, you can't judge a book by its cover
but what are we doin' but just that
we've been judging people by color
love ain't got no color, that's a fact

what I want to know is
what color have you painted peace
what color is harmony

(Frankie Beverly/Maze - "Color Blind")

2006-02-09T15:02:00.000-08:00

A couple of quickies:

1.) Doesn't the "shoe bombers flying planes into tallest building in Los Angeles" sound just a bit like the compendium of Terrorism's Greatest Hits, compiled and remastered for this year's elections? One of things I remember from the very beginning of the "War on Terror" is a statement by George W. that there'd be lots of things we wouldn't, that we couldn't, know about the war. Things like covert ops to kill terrorists, propoganda campaigns (he didn't mention that specifically, but it's there by inference), etc. That's the way this administration operates -- the whole thing is a black ops campaign against... Terrorism? The Democrats? Husbands pulling feeding tubes from their permanently brain-dead wives? Several theories (and these are theories in the "Big Bang" sense, not in the "intelligen design" sense) strive to provide answers to why this administration is so obsessed with "enemies" -- it's a political game, because fear is the only political tool the administration has left. Or perhaps it's because fear is the only game they play, being children of Reagan and the Cold War. I tend, however, to believe that the time for the Great Reckoning is here. The Administration broke international law by flaunting the U.N. and invading Iraq even though the U.N. resolution (and the U.S. bill that supposedly authorized the war) explicity stated that it was up to the Security Council to decide when such an invasion should occur. That's a big legal debt that hasn't been paid yet. Abu-Ghraib has never made it all the way up to the superiors in the Bush administration who authorized torture, it's about time for that debt to come in. The many domestic political disasters, from No Child Left Behind to the Medicare reforms to various illegal activities by the administration and Republican members of congress -- that's another bill that's past due. I do think fear is what motivates this Administration, but I think it's the fear of all the bad karma that's going to be returned upon their heads, whether that be losing a number of Republican seats to Democrats in November or getting sentenced to do hard time in jail or getting impeached for violating federal law.

2.) Considering the history of this Administration, and examining the way they've worked in the past, I think that all of the "big stuff" that happens will, as it has in the past, happen outside the normal political channels. We've heard two stories like this in the last 24 hours -- President Bush has oh-so-quietly slipped his entire Social Security plan into the latest budget and Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert recently hijacked a defense appropriation bill, changing its language _after_ the vote to include legal protections for pharmaceutical companies. If we are to have a draft, the laws authorizing it will come as a midnight ammendment to some random appropriations bill, and probably targeting only a certain subgroup of people so as not to look suspicious. Or it will come in some arcane rule change. Either way, that's how it'll happen. There's no public support for a draft? Fine, the administration will just bypass Congress and do it some other way. I think this extends to many other areas of concern, including possible military action against Iran. We strove for a long time before the official start of the Iraq war to pursue it -- firing not just on surface-to-air missile batteries that fired on NATO warplanes, but taking out _any_ surface-to-air missile batteries. Sneaking across the border to "soften up" border security, etc. All of these happened before the war, and when they start happening in Iran we'll know there's trouble.

I do not look forward to the next few months, it's gonna be a rocky ride.

2006-01-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

Then and Now

Then (February, 2003): Paul Wolfowitz, speaking for the Pentagon, disputes an official Army report that occupying Iraq would take 200,000 + troops and cost over $90 billion. His figures? 100,000 troops to occupy Iraq and an "unknown" cost. Guess who was most correct? If you guessed the Army, you win a cookie.

Now (January, 2006): Donald Rumsfeld, speaking for the Pentagon, disputes an official Pentagon report written by a former Army officer which concludes that the number of troops needed in Iraq "clearly exceed those available for the mission". Aside from the self-defeating aspect of disputing a report his own department commissioned and which he hasn't read yet (or so Rumsfeld claims), we'll ask the question. Who do you think is and will be the most correct? If you guessed the Army officer, then you understand that we may be headed for either a.) a premature (with regards to accomplishing the "mission") withdrawl, or b.) a draft. In case you're curious, the Army officer picked choice a.

2006-01-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

If I was king for just one day
I'd give it all away
I'd give it all away
Just to be with you

[Tompson Twins, King For A Day]

2005-12-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

A bit of blog echo chambering, here's a copy of the memos that Tony Blair is trying to suppress regarding torture and Uzbekistan, as pulled from Americablog:

UK Torture Memos

Source.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful".

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Craig Murray says:

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.

First document: Confidential letters from Uzbekistan

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.
Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.
The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders.
We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

Second Document - summary of legal opinion from Michael Wood arguing that it is legal to use information extracted under torture:

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

2005-12-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

From the Independent:

'Mr Bush also admitted for the first time that the intelligence mistakes over Iraq's alleged WMD made it harder for him to argue that Iran's nuclear programme posed a threat. "People will say, 'Well, the intelligence failed in Iraq, therefore how can we trust the intelligence on Iran?'."'

'If Britain, France and Germany failed to negotiate a deal to end Tehran's nuclear ambitions, Iran would face sanctions at the United Nations, he warned.' [Source: The Independent]

Presidents come and go every four or eight (or, hopefully, six...) years, but the U.N. will always be there. We remember quite well a number of Iraqi war supporters who attacked the U.N. and the U.N. process, including our current ambassador to that institution. The Bush Administration itself has a number of U.N.-phobes among its members. All of these dismissed the U.N. inspections as "ineffective" (while trying to get as much intelligence from the inspectors as possible), arguing that the time for that grand old institution had passed. And now, here we have a somewhat humbled U.S. President warning of "sanctions at the United Nations" as Iran's possible reward for pursuing its nuclear program. The U.N. isn't going anywhere, and those who've called for its death must now rely on it to do what the U.S. can't -- keep Iran in check. This, to me, is yet another sign that the Bush Administration isn't terribly principled and plays as much politics as any other recent Presidency. The U.S. is in a tight spot, its forces tied down in Iraq and no domestic stomach for another invasion. Would we be in the same situation if we'd let the U.N. process play itself out? I tend to think we wouldn't, but it's too late for hypotheticals. Bush must live with the reality that his decisions have weakened America. The rest of the U.N. critics must deal with the truth that the U.N.'s intelligence on Iraq was better than the U.S.', and that the U.S. cannot operate in the world without the U.N.

2005-12-16T15:16:00.000-08:00

Nobody knows
who the e n e m y i s
'cause he never goes into hiding
he's slitting our throats
right in front of our eyes
while we pull the casket he's riding

gotta get it together
gotta get it together

and see what's happening,
you, and you and you!

[Eugene McDaniels, "Headless Heroes"]

2005-11-28T19:00:00.000-08:00

Quickie -- I found these two paragraphs about Bush's immigration plan somewhat ironic:

'Earlier in Tucson, Bush spoke to a supportive audience that included border patrol agents and military troops. He was flanked by two black Customs and Border Protection helicopters and giant green and yellow signs that said "Protecting America's Borders."'

'He said he is providing border agents with cutting-edge technology like overhead surveillance drones and infrared cameras, while at the same time constructing simple physical barriers to entry.' (Source: The Pickler)

Irony in this case is due to the U.S. having played a part just last week in talks to open the border between Palestine and Egypt. Not to mention "physical barriers" evokes images of Israel's illegal wall around parts of Palestine. And thus Bush is supporting a two-level plan; more temporary work visas and an escalation of the millitarization of the U.S. - Mexico border. Perhaps he's spent some time with Ariel Sharon, or maybe he just has something against countries with the color green in their flags. Either way, this is merely a dodge meant to a.) solidify Republican support for something, b.) change the headlines away from the Iraq war, the Plame investigation, the conviction of Cunningham on tax evasion and bribery charges, and a whole host of other bad news for the President. I'm personally waiting for the bill that privatizes border security and deputizes locals to arrest "illegals" crossing the border. Not to mention we now all get to say "President Bush, tear down this wall!" Happy, happy, joy, joy...

...Random observation -- if you're going to print up big "Protecting America's Borders" signs and make them nice millitaristic colors, you may want to avoid using an Eagle on the background. Especially when talking about Mexico, seeing as how they have a grand-looking (and free-looking) eagle in the foreground of their flag. Something about the juxtaposition of those two images strikes me as wrong...

2005-11-28T06:37:00.000-08:00

New Hersh. He writes about three subjects, two of which I think are worth noting here. First off, a bit about Bush:

'Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.'

'Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.'

'The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.'

'“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”'

My comments in the post immediately below this one apply, so I won't say more here other than to point out that I hope I'm wrong, and that Bush doesn't fit into the group of fundamentalists described by Moyers.

The second point worth pointing out is a bit at the very end of Hersh's piece. I suspect, however, that this will one day merit a longer article of its own:

'. . . the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”'

And so the mission creeps further from its stated aim of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and establishing democracy. If my scorecard is correct, this would mean that at least two other countries in the region have seen fighting due to the Iraq occupation -- Iran (via special forces and possibly Kurdish forces trained by Israel) and now Syria. We've heard rumblings before about possible millitary action against both countries. We've now heard about combat missions happening in both countries. How much more will we escalate those conflicts? What are the parameters for pursuing "insurgents" into Syria? All of this makes me very uneasy about U.S. intentions in the region.

2005-11-15T21:57:00.000-08:00

From Bill Moyers:

'. . . One-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup Poll is accurate, believes the Bible is literally true. This past November, several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in what is known as the "rapture index."'

'These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "bibli-cal lands," legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.'

'I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That is why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. That is why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations, where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." For them a war with Islam in the Middle East is something to be welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The rapture index - "the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity" - now stands at 153.'

'So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? As Glenn Scherer reports in the online environmental journal Grist, millions of Christian fundamentalists believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but hastened as a sign of the coming apocalypse.'

'We're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half of the members of Congress are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian-right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who before his recent retirement quoted from the biblical Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to relish the thought.'

As a Christian, I feel it is my duty to stand up for a theological view of the world that is 180 degrees removed from what Mr. Moyers describes above. While I believe the Bible to be the word of God, and believe in what we call in our church the "second coming" of Christ, I also know that it is wrong to hasten the apocalypse as some are trying to do. That is completely contrary to the tone, demeanor, and doctrine of the Bible. While I believe that it will happen, I've also read the first part of the New Testament which says blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the meek, blessed are the pure in heart. None of these virtues allow for increasing the misery of mankind or standing idly by while the world suffers from its various calamities. The most reprehesible and repulsive impulse is that of war, and specifically the idea that making war in the Middle East will speed the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. It is a doctrine that is corrupted by power, by blood lust, by vengance and a brittle dogma which quite frankly is satanic to the core.

Some modern "Chistians" lust after power for the express purpose of furthering these events. In the process, they demonstrate through their actions who they really are and whom they really serve. Chist taught that his kingdom is not of this world. It is opposed to the way many things in the world work -- corruption is corruption, no matter whom you purport to serve. The Ten Commandments are not conditional once you've proclaimed yourself a follower of Christ. Neither, for that matter, are the commandments Jesus himself gave in the New Testament. These are truths and abiding by them is paramount to leading a life consistent with the gospel. There is nor has there ever been a requirement from the Lord to perform "dirty work". He will return, as he tells us, at a time only known to him -- even the "angels in heaven" don't know when that will be. There is nothing we can do to either speed it up or slow it down. All we can do is live righteously and try our best to love God, love our neighbor, serve others, be charitable, and try our best to exemplify Christ's teachings in our daily lives.

God does not rub his hands in glee at the thought of punishing the wicked. I believe that he is concerned about the well-being of all of his children, whether they are Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Agnostic or Atheist or don't conform to any of these labels. Such a God must mourn when he looks at those who profess his name working to bring about the evils prophesied in the Bible. Those prophesies are a warning, not a blueprint. If it were so, then Al-Qaeda would really be on a mission from God, as they've provided a convenient excuse to start several wars in the Middle East. So, too, would Hitler be part of the Grand Plan, an agent of God in producing the necessary circumstances to create a Jewish state. Communism also would have the divine stamp of approval, as it provided provocation and a number of opportunities to make war in all the right places. I have records in my collection of various preachers who prophesied that Communism would lead to the rapture, usually in or around the year 2000. They preached that it would be Russia invading Israel, providing the 200 million troops necessary to fulfill the biblical quota for Armageddon.

Of course, this didn't happen and thus we know that these were and are false prophets. Jesus taught us that "by their fruit shall ye know them". After two decades of observing the "fruit" of this brand of Christian theology, I know what it is -- Evil.

2005-09-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

The last paragraph from an article in the Telegraph:

'Republican strategists hope, however, that as the region starts to recover Mr Bush will regain his reputation and that Democrat leaders will help share the political blame.' [Source]

"...help share the political blame"? No. Bush owns this, as the Republicans run our government from top to bottom. That's some serious wishful thinking. Maybe Al Gore will apologize for upstaging the president by chartering flights using his own money to fly hospital patients out of the region... Or, rather, that act will be turned into some sort of political liability, in the same way that John Kerry was "swift-boated." But aside from the fact that some of the local folks responding to the disaster were Democrats, all of the major decisionmaking was in the hands of the President. After all, the Republicans have worked very hard to ensure that Bush's authority is unquestioned. If Bush can override the Geneva Conventions by declaring that people are enemy combatants, why couldn't he make sure a few hundred buses showed up in New Orleans on Saturday or Sunday before the storm?

2005-09-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

Garbage Out

As we stand amongst the disasters of New Orleans and Iraq, it is important to ask how we got here. I'm not at my verbal best this evening, but I've had a few thoughts about our current situation and would like to point out a pattern that I've noticed in many areas of life and politics and, especially, in this administration.

The pattern is this -- bad policy leads to bad outcomes. Garbage in equals garbage out, and it's high time we took out the trash. I've seen over the last few years the resurgence (now, though, I'm not really sure it was ever gone) of once en-vogue ideas, resurrected as part of the defense of the Bush administration. I've noted on these pages before how many of these resemble the twisted mess that was the justification for Apartheid in South Africa and Colonialism generally in the rest of Africa and elsewhere. These ideas include the necessity to needlessly restrict freedom in order to guarantee safety, that our way of life (meaning what we have here in the U.S.) is the best way of life and worth exporting by force, that fighting those who vaguely appear to be our enemy is just as good as fighting the real enemy. All of these assumptions and a million more form the house of cards that is the Bush administration. That house has fallen down.

Or, more specifically, been bombed out and sunk under water as proof that these ideas will inevitably lead to sloppy execution and ultimately the whole affair will fail. Let us consider some of the basic facts leading up to the disaster in New Orleans. President Bush weakened FEMA by following some standard near-sighted ideas; appointing people to high positions who support your views, even if they aren't qualified to do the job, and gambling on Mother Nature being less threatening to our national security than Iraq. Both of these stem from the basic premise that all a President does is political; such rotten logic could only spring from the mind of Karl Rove. The horrible thing about it is he's right about the political side of the equation -- if you run everything as if it were a campaign, you'll generally win. However, it's the stuff that gets thrown overboard (Iraq and New Orleans being two examples) that's actually important to the average American. The suspension of reality in the name of political gain is one of the saddest developments to strike this country in years, and it's made us infinitely weaker. This weakness is manifest every day in the myriad of poor decisions made as a direct result of the focus on politics. Sure, Mr. President, you might win elections. However, if you keep it up you won't have a country to govern.

I'm heartened by the poll numbers as folks wake up to what has happened to America, but I fear it won't be enough to save us -- what happens if another hurricane hits New Orleans in the next month? What if another Andrew hits Florida? Can we deal with multiple terrible natural disasters? If you think the weaknesses of FEMA and the executive branch are bad now, wait until they undergo some real strain. It's funny, but you'd think an administration that puts so much emphasis on a Biblically-based Judeo-Christianity would be prepared when events of Biblical proportion happen. Instead, it seems the Bush administration said "oh well, it was going to happen anyway" or "that's way too much to deal with; we'll just have to give up". No one cared enough about the hurricane to respond until days afterwards; we all know this, despite the attempts to cover it up. Quite frankly, it makes me wonder if they're secretly trying to hasten the apocalypse.

If Bill Clinton can be impeached for lying to a grand jury, the Bush administration dserves it for ruining our nation. The very existence of the Bush administration, at this point, is a crime. And it will happen over and over again until they are removed from office.

As Americans, we deserve so much better than garbage in, garbage out.

2005-07-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of blasting talking points all over the internet, I'm going to do something I don't do here all that often -- quote another blogger at length. In honor of a certain unnamed RNC chairman, and instead of writing some screed which only serves to popularize his claims, I've decided that Digby is my whatever-national-committee chairman for today and these are his talking points. Ladies and gentlemen, the truth:

'In his op-ed on July 6th,2003, Wilson gave a straighforward account of who he is and why he went on this fact-finding trip to Niger. He says "I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report." He does not say that Cheney had sent him personally on the mission. He reports that he found no evidence that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger.'

'He says that he assumes from working in the government for many years that his report had been forwarded through channels. When he heard the president use the claim about African uranium in the SOTU, he became alarmed and asked the State department about it. He accepted that the excuse that the president might have been talking about a different African country than Niger until he later learned that Niger was specifically mentioned quite recently in official documents. He concludes at this time, based upon the fact that he had personally been involved in debunking this claim, that the administration had been "fixing" intelligence.'

'The administration was now for the first time explicitly and openly being accused of knowingly using false information to sell the war. And since Wilson had specifically named the Vice president as having been the one to request additional information that led to his trip, the White House was involved at a very high level. The administration claims that this was not true, that in spite of a series of mishaps, there was no concerted or conscious effort to mislead the country about the intelligence. And whatever mistakes were made were the result of shoddy intelligence work, not the "fixing" or "sexing up" of the evidence. When the Niger episode became public, they decided that it was time for George Tenet to admit that he had screwed this particular case up and they arranged for him to make a public statement to that effect.'

'The White House response to Wilson's piece is that Cheney never asked for the information in the first place. And they said they had no idea about Wilson's evidence because his trip was a low level nepotistic boondoggle arranged by his wife, a CIA "employee." Karl Rove and others spoke to several reporters to that effect (They now claim, since Matthew Cooper's e-mail was leaked that it was only in order to "warn them off" taking Wilson seriously.) Robert Novak --- an extremely unlikely columnist for the white house to feel they had to warn off Wilson --- was the first to put this into print on July 13th.'

'When it came out, exposing Valerie Plame as an undercover operative, Wilson believed that it was an act of retaliation and a signal to anyone else who might be thinking of coming forward. Novak was quoted shortly after the column ran saying: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." (He has since said that he used the term "operative" inappropriately, although he has used that word very precisely throughout his career to mean "undercover.")In the days after the column appeared there were reports that the administration was actively pushing the column, claiming that Wilson's wife was "fair game."'

'I have no idea if Joe Wilson's wife or the ghost of Ronald Reagan was involved in sending him on that trip and I don't care. It's irrelevant and it's always been irrelevant and they were either incredibly malevolent or incredibly negligent in settling on using her as the best way to discredit Wilson. But as I wrote earlier, I think it was a P.R. decision, and it has the mark of Rove all over it. Thuggishness is his hallmark. Any chance they have to portray a male opponent as a milksop, they do it. I think the "wife" being involved in getting her husband a job was central to their calculations.'

'I don't know if Cheney read his report but considering what we now know, I don't find it credible that he didn't. He has been proven to have been immersed in the pre-war intelligence, particularly the claim that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear program. That was his baby. But Wilson didn't claim in the op-ed that Cheney knew, only that he assumed his report had been circulated. And since he'd been told that the trip itself was a result of Cheney's question he assumed that it had filtered up to Cheney.'

'That is what sent the administration into overdrive --- Wilson merely mentioning Cheney in the context of fixing the intelligence. Quite a panicked reaction, don't you think?'

'The White House response to Joe Wilson's report was that it was something cooked up in the bowels of the CIA by his (gasp) wife and it was not very compelling and nobody paid any attention to it, even there, and they never sent the information back to the White House anyway.'

'If it weren't for the fact that Wilson's conclusions about the uranium were right, you might even believe their tale. If it weren't for the fact that Dick Cheney was knee deep in the intelligence, even personally spending time at the CIA, leaning over the shoulders of desk officers, you might believe it. If it weren't for the fact that the aluminum tubes "evidence" was shown to be false, the drone plane "evidence" was shown to be laughable and the mobile labs "evidence" was shown to be non-existent you might even believe it. If it weren't for the fact that the meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta and the Iraqis was proven false, that we had chances to take out Zarquawi and refused and that the inspectors were at the very moment of the SOTU reporting that they were not finding any stockpiles, we might even believe it. If it weren't for the fact that the Downing Street Memos show definitively that the US knew its intelligence was weak and decided to "fix" it we might even believe it.'

'If we'd found even one scintilla of evidence that Saddam had the stockpiles, the programs or the means to make weapons of mass destruction, we might even believe it.'

'Unfortunately for the White House, there have been so many revelations now aside from the "16 words" that they no longer can claim credibility on this issue. It is quite clear to any sentient being that they manipulated, misled and outright lied about the intelligence. Joe Wilson knew back in 2003 that something was wrong. He had been involved in one particular part of the intelligence gathering and he knew the facts were being misrepresented. He spoke out. And the white house responded by portraying him as a partisan loser whose report was so low level that nobody ever saw it. In the course of that they also exposed his wife's covert status, likely endangering national security.'

2005-07-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

While we await the fate of Karl Rove, it's instructive to ponder the characterization he made of Democrats in a now-infamous speech a few weeks back. He lambasted "liberals" for supporting a law-enforcement approach to fighting terrorism. This "law enforcement" approach has been used to great effect in Spain. It is also (assuming from the news reports) being used in England. Could it help the U.S. in apprehending those who carry out terrorist acts? Here's a couple of questions-and-answers from the New Yorker's most recent Q & A section:

'Q: A surprising part of the story is the role of the F.B.I. in challenging the Pentagon. Can you talk about that a little? Specifically, it seems that there are two issues: on the one hand, some agents simply objected to the treatment they witnessed; on the other, they had a different approach to interrogation, based more on building rapport, and different goals.'

'A:The F.B.I. has had fierce fights with the Pentagon over the interrogation methods used in Guantánamo and elsewhere. The F.B.I., to begin with, is a law-enforcement agency, geared towards prosecuting cases in the U.S. courts. The Pentagon is more interested in gaining actionable intelligence than in bringing wrongdoers to justice. The F.B.I. requires its agents to read suspects their Miranda rights, and to question them in ways that are consonant with American law, so that when cases do get to trial they aren't thrown out. U.S. courts, for instance, would never allow confessions from suspects who have been coerced into implicating themselves. But as your question points out, the divide goes beyond just what the U.S. courts allow. The F.B.I., which has had years of experience questioning suspects, has found that non-coercive interrogation methods yield more reliable results. F.B.I. officials acknowledge that force may get someone to talk, but it won’t necessarily get them to tell the truth. Force often yields false confessions. One agent told me, "I'd confess to being the third gunman on the grassy knoll if you tortured me. But what good would that be? Not only am I giving you misleading information, you also haven't solved the crime."'

'Q:This raises the question of whether torture works. Is it a mistake to think that it does?'

'Many experts think so [emphasis mine]. The Israeli Supreme Court, for instance, banned the use of torture in interrogations in 1999, after finding that it resulted in too many false confessions and too much moral baggage. An interesting case study is discussed in this article, involving the alleged twentieth hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani. He was subjected to extremely harsh interrogation, which some would define as torture. In the end, we know he confessed that he was, as suspected, sent by Al Qaeda to assist in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But was this a triumph? Traditional non-coercive legal methods had already proven this to U.S. law-enforcement authorities. Qahtani was stopped in Orlando, Florida, by an alert immigration agent, who refused him entry based on doubts about his reason for entering the country. After he was later captured in Afghanistan, he was sent to Guantánamo, where he refused to give his name. A fingerprint check identified him, and a subsequent search of phone and parking records revealed that he was connected to Mohammed Atta. None of this required torture. It just required smart (and legal) police work. So, after months of extremely harsh treatment, Qahtani essentially confirmed what the government already knew about him. One of the sources I interviewed asked, given the international political outrage that Guantánamo has provoked, "Was it worth it?" It's a question that Congress and the public have not yet really stepped up to answer.' [source: The New Yorker]

I put the emphasis on the "Most experts think so" bit because a.) that's important to realize -- the folks whose job it is to get information are practically all in agreement that torture doesn't work, and b.) because the Bush Administration is, once again, showing its disdain for the opinions of experts. Both points are important, but the second one is part of a larger narrative -- the Bush Administration routinely ignores expert opinion. This willful ignorance is the reason why we won't win the "war on terrorism" under this administration. As I've argued in the past, fighting a war is a science (as is ending a war) and the constant disdain for, and fight against, science by those making the decisions bodes very poorly for any hope of gaining ground against extremists. Also, it's important to realize that it's not _our_ definition of torture that determines whether or not it's effective; if the person who's being interrogated feels they are being tortured then they will probably lie or provide a false confession.

2005-05-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

Another blast from the past, this excerpt is from March of 2003 (around the time the Node began ranting on Blogger). Considering the recent revelations (namely, in today's Times of London) regarding the stepped-up U.S. air campaign in the latter half of 2002, I think it's a good idea to remember where these guys came from:

'. . . The British and the U.S. are definitely stepping up the air campaign, attacking ground-to-ground missiles and generally breaking the no-fly-zone agreements by doing so. Meanwhile, it seems that publicly, the administration has pulled back a bit from pushing the timetable (although it's still very aggressive). My guess is that they'll try and do as much as they can under the table to weaken Iraq -- if the world won't approve of a full-scale invasion, then we'll pursue the war on a level that doesn't register and draw criticism. I would hope that people see through these efforts and realize that, for all intents and purposes, the war has already begun. A long history of covert wars during the Cold War points to a desire and ability, on the part of the U.S., to push "covert" military action as far as it can go. There are, however, operational problems with these low-level conflicts. As the visibility of the conflict increases, the goals change, and it can greatly complicate planning and deployment. Because most of the battles are not publicized, getting the truth can be difficult and there's a tendency for reporting from the field to be edited to make the situation sound rosier than it is, causing policy makers to miscalculate and to think they're playing a stronger hand than they really are. Enforcement of operational standards, whether it be rules about gathering intelligence, evaluation of potential allies, or ensuring that men and equipment are trained and deployed properly, falls by the wayside in favor of a "quick" victory. This reminds me that yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld requested that the new missile defense system be exempted from requirements for operational testing. This lowering of operational standards, along with all these other issues, weaken the U.S. military and decrease its effectiveness. In the end we end up with messy and poorly executed operations and the work of many dedicated and hard-working individuals gets nullified by the political motivations of a few people at the top.'

'Several of the Bush administration officials are hold-overs from Cold War administrations, such as Nixon, Ford, and Regan, that practiced this sort of ineffective and dangerous kind of war. Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and many others had positions that allowed them access to policy discussions which influenced American actions in Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and many other Cold War hotspots. I suspect that their current methodology of pursuing conflicts on whatever level they can get away with has its roots in those operations. The whole situatuation is a throwback to the days when the administration sqared off against professors, journalists, and other professionals who disagreed with their policies. We all know how those conflicts turned out -- I think they give us an idea of how some of our current military adventures may end, too.'

2005-05-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

"It's all going to come out when everything is said and done."

Indeed it will. I half wonder if the purpose of repealing the filibuster is so the President can protect the architects of the terribly misguided policies which led to the abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq (and who knows where else) from prosecution and investigation. Heaven knows he'd probably pardon those involved anyway, but that is not justice. And we wonder why there are anti-American demonstrations in Muslim countries -- it doesn't take a story by Newsweek (and one which is probably accurate in its description of the desecration of the Koran) to see the message the U.S. is sending to the rest of the world. This simply must be stopped; I remember reading an interview with Seymour Hersh a few months ago wherein he'd become somewhat resigned to the idea that no one seemed to care about the torture which happened at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. I hope that this marks the end of torture being an nonstory and the start of real accountability.

...update: I'm posting as I'm reading the story, there's all sorts of stuff here. For example:

'"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.'

Guilty until prove innocent. The days of the Galactic Empire (what a fitting week for the Air Force to revive the "Star Wars" program...) are here.

2005-05-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Here's a paragraph from an entry I wrote a bit over two years ago. You can see the original post at the top of the page here. At the time I was fairly optimistic that the impending nastiness of the war in Iraq (which is demonstrated on an almost daily basis) would lead to a Democrat being elected for president in 2004. Also, at the time, I felt that compromise was required to restore balance. However, again and again we have witnessed a White House and Congress unwilling to compromise with the Democrats, uninterested in the views of the party with fewer congressmen and senators in Washington D.C. The Republicans in the Senate are going so far as to ignore the Senate parlimentarian, a man who understands fairness as a necessity for doing his job, so they can perform their illegal (in the context of the Senate rules) maneuver to end filibusters. Thus, largely and almost exclusively, the actions of the Republicans in control of our government today have been uniformly and blatantly partisan, with no regard for common sense, science, the rule of law, or even good sportsmanship. Here, then, is the paragraph:

'Here at the Node I pause every once in a while to indulge in a little political theorizing. Right now, the Republican party is in control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency. This triumverate of political power is demonstrating how one-sided its political agenda really is. Now, imagine with me for a moment a scenario whereby the Republicans lose control of the Presidency, along with one or both of the houses of Congress. Add to this the current slate of legislative agenda items -- drilling in ANWR, for instance (which is about to slip through on the back of a budget bill. Please encourage your senators, especially those of you down in Arkansas, to prevent this from happening). Let's assume that the current budget bill passes with ANWR provision intact, and thus becomes law. Now, when power changes hands in January of 2005, what happens with ANWR? Since this is a proposal that's hotly contested, it's not too far fetched to consider that an incoming Democratic president would push for a bill declaring ANWR off-limits again (as it is now). Now, extrapolate this out over the entire current legislative agenda, including all the bills that have passed in the last two years, and we have a problem. The problem isn't that these proposals are good or bad policy (I believe that the ANWR proposal is bad policy, but you probably guessed that). The problem is we're on a pendulum that threatens to swing back and forth every four years for the next few elections. The lack of compromise in the Senate and the House is producing legislation that won't withstand the test of time, and _that_ will contribute to "gridlock" in Washington.'

The sum result of all that's happened in the last four or five years is the debasing of the U.S. Government. In this case, cooler heads will have to undo a number of the blatantly partisan changes made by the Repblicans for the sake of securing our future as a nation. The damage done is not irreversible, but it will require an almost wholesale repeal of the Bush administration's agenda -- from rolling back the tax cuts to passing real environmental regulation to re-establishing the U.S.' reputation in the world. That's the only way we can return to some semblance of balance. The hard part will be to not take advantage of the precedent set by the Repbulicans and abuse power in the same way. Comeuppance is due, but a restoration of balance is the best way to achieve it. Then, we can argue policy changes on their merits. For now, though, the task is to avoid going completely into a ditch and ruining the country.

2005-04-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Quickie: Perhaps Silvio Berlusconi and Tom Delay should spend a weekend together in political detox. I hate to say it, but it's hard to focus on what's happening in the world when here in the U.S. our own political situation is more like something out of a tabloid than anything resembling actual normal politics. These two are birds of a feather in more ways than one; both have a healthy disrespect for judges and a penchant for changing the laws and rules when those laws and rules don't suit their purposes (or are about to land them in hot water). Anyway, enough of that diversion -- needless to say I don't have much faith in the ability of either man to contribute anything of value to fighting the war on terrorism. Anyone who puts personal political survival ahead of the national interest in a way that imperils their government cannot be trusted to deal appropriately with the issues associated with terrorism.

2005-04-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

As seen on Google:

Rumsfeld warns Iraqis against cronyism
Times Online - 1 hour ago

By Chris Johnston, Times Online. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, warned Iraqi politicians today not to purge the security forces and stack the ranks with their own men.

Great advice. It'd be nice if the Bush administration followed it as well.

2005-03-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get a bit tired of all this U.S.-centric thinking (and I do it to, mostly as a concerned citizen). There are other things happening in the world that affect everyone, the U.S. certainly doesn't hold the corner on influence. In fact, as it continues to ignore the rest of the world, the rest of the world is ignoring it and moving on to other things. With that, here's two paragraphs from an article about drug legislation in India:

'The Indian government believes that patent recognition is an essential pre-condition for India's drug industry to further its own drug research and development and attract foreign partners. But health activists are urging the government to reconsider as millions of Aids patients would suffer from the withdrawal of affordable medication.'

'Ellen't Hoen, of the relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, says fifty percent of people with Aids in the developing world depend on generic drugs from India and the new patent law will cut the lifeline to other countries.' [source]

Of course, this is a domestic issue with respect to the U.S. and it may adversely affect U.S. security. How? AIDS, of all diseases, is the most likely to cause destabilization of entire countries. Shrinking the supply of cheap drugs increases the likelihood that such an event may happen. So, as a U.S. citizen and as a global citizen I hope that the upper house of parliment in India seriously considers the worldwide impact of its decision. A larger issue is the negative impact of WTO entrance requirements on the economies of developing (and developed, for that matter) countries. It is good in one sense, in that writ large the application of patent protection is demonstrated to have huge negative effects. Also, that the WTO exists and has enough influence to sway a country to change its laws indicates that international organizations enjoy a fair amount of power and influence in the world. It would be nice, though, if the WTO contacted the WHO (World Health Organization) and a few other groups involved with quality-of-life issues and adjusted its admissions requirements accordingly.

While I don't think we'll have much of a chance to move towards enlightened global participation in the U.S. within the next few years, there is an opportunity to influence international organizations that aren't as ideologically bound as the current U.S. administration. Certainly the U.N. has been much more reasonable about addressing issues around the globe (of course, there are areas where the U.N. could improve). Since this opportunity exists, and since there seems to be a paucity of blogs with a global outlook (to my knowledge -- links in comments would be appreciated), I'll be using this space to write more about truly international issues and how to address them, including terrorism. The usual Node stuff still applies, of course, since there's still a fuzzy war being fought in my name and I'm not happy about it, not to mention the policy decisions of the Bush Administration. But if the current administration won't represent my point of view on international affairs, then I'll do it myself.

2005-03-21T01:57:00.000-08:00

Donald Rumsfeld, when pressed about insufficient troop levels in Iraq at the time of the invasion, recently had the opportunity to own up to his mistakes. Instead, he punted:

'The fault, Mr. Rumsfeld contended in two appearances on television talk shows, rested with Turkey, a NATO ally, which would not give permission for the Fourth Infantry Division to cross its territory and open a northern front at the start of the war in March 2003.' (link)

Let us, for a moment, consider how Turkey might view such a charge. There is now sitting on their border a large and well-armed Kurdish force which has received some rather advanced training from the Israelis. These Kurds are being used for incursions into Iran, but also represent a threat to Turkey due to the large Kurdish population there and its disaffection (certainly understandable) with the Turkish government. Do you, being Turkish and not particularly appreciative of this turn of events, take what Mr. Rumsfeld said as a threat? What's his purpose here, aside from misdirecting criticism that he's richly and rightly earned? We have to wonder, although this administration often trots out such smoke-screen tactics when it wants to either cover for something else or give everyone yet another rationale that'll last a week or so before it gets shot down by reality. And the truth is, the timing of the Iraqi operation was all on the U.S. -- Turkey is to blame only if one assumes that the U.S. had to act _immediately_. If not, then it's a question of logistics (albeit large and complicated logistics) to get those troops moved someplace other than Turkey. Then again, I don't think the administration really planned on the Turks not cooperating. What sort of cards does the Bush administration plan to play? And, again, is there an implicit threat in what Rumsfeld has said? I am not sure, although I tend to think there may be more going on and this is only surfacing because the U.S. is trying to shore up its hand...

2005-03-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

NO!

We hope all countries involved with the World Bank will soundly reject Paul Wolfowitz.

2005-02-23T11:35:00.000-08:00

raising the cap -- is it really an anti-tax measure?

President Bush has recently announced that he's open to the idea of raising the cap on the amount of income taxable for Social Security. Several conservative political groups are already on the attack against the idea, however I tend to think that this is yet another handout to the rich. How so? Let's consider the following scenario: assume for a moment that the President presents a plan that includes both the diversion of Social Security tax funds to private accounts and raises the cap on taxable income. If you're well-to-do and you're more concerned about lowering your tax liability, then it's a good thing to a.) give more to Social Security, but then b.) divert those new funds to a private account. So while it looks like Social Security is getting more funds because of the higher cap, in reality there's now another tax shelter (and a perfectly legal one) for those new funds which aren't actually going towards the Social Security general fund or to buy treasury notes for the trust fund.

Of course, all of this is speculation -- Bush hasn't decided to stop playing games and actually present a plan. Nevertheless it's important to realize that raising the cap on taxable income may not make up for the shortfall if the plan also includes diverting funds to private accounts.

2005-02-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

I'm not normally the economically-minded side of the Node, but there is an issue I am particularly concerned about. Here is a letter I sent to President Bush to express my concern about his so-called "plans" for Social Security:

Dear President Bush:

Sir, I do not understand why you continue to be dishonest in your approach towards Social Security. If the system is in such bad shape, why then do you have no plan? It is obvious to us Americans that your commitment to reforming the system is less than one hundred percent because you won't come out and say what, exactly, you want to do to "fix" the system.

If what I'm hearing and reading in the press is true, it seems like all the things that may or may not constitute your "plan" are actually harmful to the financial future of Social Security. By that I mean you do not seem committed to "fixing" the system, rather you want to cut benefits as an admission that the system cannot be "fixed". That, to me, seems like a cowardly approach to the problem. What do you mean when you say the U.S. Government cannot make its promised paymets to U.S. workers like me? I've been working on and off since I was 14 (I'm now 29) and I fully expect for the government to keep its promise with respect to Social Security. Otherwise, I expect an honest explanation as to why I cannot expect to receive the promised benefits when I retire and I'd like to know what you're going to do to make sure that doesn't happen. I hope by that time to have made enough money with my private savings to not need Social Security, but in case my investments go south or something really bad happens to the U.S. economy then I want to have the security of knowing that my contributions have secured some income to keep me out of poverty. That's what I expected, until you came along and tried to tell me that Social Security was "broken" and needed to be "fixed". I fear, sir, that your unwillingness to propose a plan and stand behind it is only a cover for your real intentions, which are to deprive me of my promised benefits.

Millions of other twenty-somethings like me fully expect to receive their Social Security benefits when we retire. I hope you do not discount our interests. I also hope that you keep the promise Ronald Reagan made to younger workers like me when he said:

"...we promised to attend to the needs of those still working, not only those Americans nearing retirement but young people just entering the labor force." (source: http://www.ssa.gov/history/reaganstmts.html#1983)

2005-02-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

An Austere Budget.

President Bush's proposed budget promised to be austere. Indeed it cuts into 150 programs laying waste completely to a few of them. It hits poor people, it hits veterans, it hits first responders, it hits students, teachers, Native Americans, small business owners and it hits train riders. It doesn't really hit the very rich or large corporations oddly enough. So what do I think of it? I think that Democrats in Congress should do everything in their power to make sure it passes exactly as it is written from the President as quickly as possible.

What? Why would I want to do that? Because this is a massive bluff. The President is proposing it because he believes that a lot of the harsher parts have no chance of slipping through Congress. Why would we wish to cut money to police, or fire-fighters after all, when terrorists can supposedly strike anywhere at any given moment? Even the President isn't so foolish. Instead, he's looking for political wrangling to give him a ready made excuse for lying to the American people regarding his intentions to halve the budget deficit in this term.

"I tried to pass a sensible budget but liberals in Congress gutted it,"

The problem obviously with that logic is that liberals don't control Congress right now, and as the people feel the pinch that this budget puts on them, they will respond by making sure that detail changes. I say let the GOP add only things that benefit the wealthy and corporations. Don't let them touch the cuts. Make this the Republican Party's dream bill and watch how it turns on them. Let us soak in the austerity, in the savings as the GOP squirms trying to fend off the impending populist revolt.

And what are the savings of this budget in the end? 15 billion dollars. The President is risking his party's mandate on a 15 billion dollar bet that Americans are really stupid. There are only two ways the deficit could possibly be halved in this term and they are simple: 1 cut defense spending or 2 raise taxes. Apparently the last four years haven't been quite enough to convince the majority of the population of the GOP's intent, but give them this small dose of what they have in store and it could be devastating for the controlling party as soon as 2006. That 15 billion dollars is easily enough restored once we bring in a Congress that understands austerity has to be class neutral, and poker and public policy are not the best bedfellows.

2005-01-18T23:20:00.000-08:00

Seymour Hersh, in his latest article for the New Yorker gives us much to think about. Here, in no particular order, are the things that I feel are most important:

1.) Pakistan is being given a free pass to pursue its nuclear weapons program. This has been so for a number of years, but especially during Republican presidencies. It is, in my view, the most important of the issues raised by Hersh's article. We've discussed somewhat the history of Pakistan and its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons in this space before. Now, however, I can see how the dots connect with respect to the U.S. giving them a pass -- the U.S. wants intelligence on Iran. While that partly resolves (in my mind) the very glaring and obvious political ploy of not prosecuting A. Q. Kahn, it doesn't entirely resolve the questions I have about U.S. motives. The thing that still sticks out is the insistance by the U.S. that new IAEA inspection standards are "too intrusive". Perhaps the U.S. is doing this on behalf of Pakistan. Whatever the reason, it raises numerous red flags and indicates that there's something else at stake. Is it Israel and Pakistan the U.S. is trying to protect? Or is it the U.S. itself? I lean more towards the Israel-Pakistan theory but can't help believing that there are some Pentagon planners who think future operations require the use of theatre nuclear weapons. I'll explain why I believe this in point two.

2.) The U.S. is conducting operations in Iran and has done so for at least a year. Hersh explains that most of this is reconnisance and evidence-gathering. As the article states, Iran's targets are harder to hit than Iraq's (and that's not just because Iraq didn't have much in the way of targets) -- things are more spread out in remote areas and they're in hardened facilities. It's the existance of those facilities that makes me think U.S. war planners would like to use theatre nuclear weapons in Iran. Hersh stipulates that when the U.S. attacks Iran, it will do so using mostly covert operations. This mostly means targeted air strikes. Nuclear weapons have some advantages in this situation -- for facilities that are buried deep underground, a nuke may be the only way to destroy it. I don't think it's the first option, but I also believe that it's not off the table.

3.) Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon are now running things. The importance of this cannot be overstated -- it is a dramatic shift in how U.S. presidential administrations have conducted business over the last fifty-odd years. It means that a.) new intelligence will be gathered to support a political goal, b.) fewer restraints exist to limit Rumsfeld's powers as Secretary of Defense, and c.) there will be more covert operations, off the books and out of sight of Congress. I believe that now is the time for Congress to regain some of its oversight power (which is constitutionally guaranteed) and fight this in the courts. I don't think the Republicans in Congress realize just how subservient they are to the executive branch in this administration. Hopefully, this naked power grab will shoot up some red flags.

4.) Israel is concerned about Israel's interests, and will go against the U.S. if it needs to on the subject of Iran. In combination with an earlier Hersh article on the Israelis training Kurds to conduct commando operations, the bits from this article indicate that Israel is ready and willing to take care of what it sees as the threat posed by Iran if either Europe (through negotiations) or the U.S. (through covert/overt military action) fail. I don't even want to contemplate what would happen if Israel were to strike inside Iran either via airstrikes or by sending in strike teams -- in today's political climate such a move could spark all sorts of violence. Some in the U.S. view Israel as following the U.S. line on Iran, and I think that view is erroneous. Its interests will trump its relations with the U.S., and my guess is the U.S. would tacitly support any military action taken by Israel even if in public it pursues diplomacy.

As we noted a few posts down, now is the time to go on Iran watch. This time the game will be somewhat different -- more covert actions, etc. However, the stakes are higher than they were with Iraq and Iran possesses a much greater ability to strike back. Or, as Khatami himself put it:

'. . . Khatami said Iran would in any case defend itself against any attack by the United States, which he described as not "wise enough" to understand the implications of its own actions.'

'Khatami was asked about an article in the New Yorker magazine that reported the United States had conducted secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets.'

'"If any country tries to invade our country, we are strong enough to defend ourselves," Khatami told a news conference. . . .'

We will therefore continue to be on Iran watch.

2005-01-17T21:44:00.000-08:00

Quickie: As Bran has indicated, I'll be posting about Hersh's article in a bit (probably later this evening). However, I wanted to discuss for a minute the role of rumor in wartime. Specifically, in reference to the post below about the capture of Al-Zarqawi. Many of the civil/independence/interstate wars in Africa have happened in very large geographical areas at low intensity. In some cases, there was little or no fighting in the capital city (for instance, little of the Angolan civil war actually occured in the capital of Luanda). There were, however, huge amounts of rumors and misinformation that spread like wildfire. Some of them had a basis in fact, while others were completely fabricated and sometimes at the behest of outside parties. I believe I've written before on the Node, for instance, about one case where a rumor was passed around that the anti-government rebel group in Angola, called UNITA, had obtained fighter jets. This was not only spread around via the heresay in the capital, but was also promulgated by analysts at a South African security firm and found its way into a few press reports.

The Node has, by chance, found and subscribed itself to the email service of one such company. Whether that subscription is supposed to be limited in circulation or not we cannot tell. Some of the information in these emails is quite accurate, while other information seems to be more propoganda than information. We're working to determine how trustworthy this source may actually be, as it's quite apparent that they have a slant in one direction (pro-war, Christian, etc.). I believe that with this incident we can determine that only some of what they promulgate is trustworthy, and therefore we'll pass along on the most solid of their claims.

I mostly want our readers to know that in time of war, and especially one as diffuse (in some ways) as the Iraq conflict, there is alot of rumor and misinformation. Also, realized that some of this is spread deliberately by all interested parties. We have seen that the U.S. government certainly isn't above using such tactics in Iraq (think Jessica Lynch) and one cannot trust all the insurgency says either. Common sense and good sources are always an asset. We at the Node continue to work hard to develop and maintain both.

2005-01-17T07:02:00.000-08:00

Andrew's probably well on his way to posting this, but Sy Hersh has been snooping around the CIA again and digging up info on America's next target: Iran. The conditions that would have to be met to make American military action against Iran seem nearly impossible until Iraq is more stable, particularly with our troops spread all across Asia after the tsunami, still, the administration's ambitions are distressing, given the fiasco of their Iraqi project.

The administration has consistently sought to tear down oversight and expand presidential power well beyond what many Americans have grown accustomed to, not since FDR has the chief executive wielded so much unilateral authority. Though Hersh is focused on Middle Eastern intelligence and his sources are seemingly disgruntled intelligence officials who are getting shut out of loops they previously were in on (particularly in the vastly weakened CIA), we shouldn't be surprised if similar efforts to skirt established laws and procedures are also taking place domestically.

As far as Iran is concerned, the nuclear issue there has long been one of our most pressing security concerns, far more pressing than Saddam Hussein and Iraq were before we started a war there, and the Iranian leadership's continuing nuclear ambitions threaten the US and our interests probably even more than the North Koreans, so this target should come as no surprise. Of course we already spent our political capital on the least of these threats, and the outcome of any military operation in Iran could lead to a global uprising against the United States' interests and citizens as easily as it could to success for the march of Democracy. Now, of all times we need a careful executive branch instead though, we have a marauding bunch of fools.

2005-01-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

How many things are wrong with this? Let us count the ways. But first, the offending paragraphs:

'Mr. Scowcroft said the situation in Iraq raised the fundamental question of "whether we get out now." He urged Mr. Bush to tell the Europeans on a trip to Europe next month: "I can't keep the American people doing this alone. And what do you think would happen if we pulled American troops out right now?"'

'In short, he was suggesting that Mr. Bush raise the specter that Iraq could collapse without a major foreign presence - exactly the rationale the administration has used for its current policy.'

1.) This is the height of American haughtiness. If we look at the larger picture, here's what we get -- The U.S. starts a war against the wishes of a large majority of the world's nations (don't forget Poland!), and especially most of the major European powers. Not only that, but in the process it snubs these nations, saying that they're unimportant, that the larger world body of which they're a member failed at its task (when it didn't), and that the U.S. can do it alone anyway. The war doesn't go according to plan, resulting instead in a rising body count and the withdrawl of many of those nations which supported the U.S. in the first place. Now, the U.S. is considering fomenting a civil war by training small strike groups as a counter-insurgency force. This move will certainly deepen the conflict and (as Robert Fisk has noted in the past) create a civil war in a nation with no history of such. And now, after all of that, the U.S. wants to pull out of this mess and wants the rest of the world to step in and essentially take its place. Somehow, that doesn't appear to be very appealing.

2.) Veiled threats are not a good way to make friends in the world. The jist of Scowcroft's argument is that if the rest of the world doesn't help the U.S., then the U.S. is simply going to leave and the world gets what it deserves. That's so blatantly wrong that I'll refrain from further comment.

3.) Note the argument put forth by Scowcroft -- America can't stay in Iraq much longer because the American people won't continue to support the president. A couple of posts down I said "...to me the war in Iraq and the Administration's running of the war are more reactions to and tools for American politics." Iraq has served its political usefulness for Bush, and is now ripe to be discarded. This is a consistent trend in the administration, namely, that ideas and programs serve only to produce positive political outcomes. Once those goals are served, they are tossed aside or completely forgotten or never funded. I have no reason to believe that the war in Iraq is any different.

2005-01-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

Quickie: A couple of sources (ours came in the form of an email, the only online version we've found is from the UPI...) are claiming that the U.S. has captured Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. We rate this as about 30% true. We don't think that, if this is true, it will spell the end for the war in Iraq. The capture of Hussein served to deflate any question about whether or not the insurgency would continue without him. So, too, do we believe that if Zarqawi has been captured the insurgency won't end. Nevertheless, he has done much harm both to U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens and we hope this news is true. We also hope that this leads to more effective intelligence operations in Iraq, an area where U.S. efforts have consistently fallen short of what's required to make headway against the insurgency/terrorists/whatever the flavor of the month for this rather loosely bound and disparate group of people is. I tend more towards the many people/many motives theory of the war -- there are many people fighting against the U.S. presence in Iraq and they have many motives.

2005-01-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

Oooh, we have a new threat -- Evil Laser Terrorists! Can they use the PATRIOT act to prosecute kids who shine lasers at movie screens as well, because that's really annoying. On a more serious note, we've gone way too far and this is just the latest (and most blatant) example.

2005-01-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

New year, same direction.

Without a shift in the economic direction of the United States, 2005 shouldn't bring any sort of economic "uncertainty" and yet that's what many pundits will have you believe as the two usual schools (markets up, markets down) try to convince the investing world that their side is right. Why I focus so much on the economic status of the U.S. in this blog devoted to bringing sense to our country's "war on terror" is because in the end, our spreading commercialism is what the terrorists are most frightened of, and ultimately what drives their desperate acts. Ironically, its also what is at the root of the Christian right's fears about the direction of society, and though they misdirect that angst towards liberal education, contraceptive feminism and homosexuality (including all related "deviances") the consumer society forest looms behind whatever tree the right chooses to destroy next.

Ultimately, if capitalist theory is correct (and so far, it has proven to be against everything else) the markets, the consumers, and all of their related "evils" will win this battle and Islamic extremism, Christian bigotry, and all forces opposed to the spread of global trade will have to adjust their goals or die under the weight of their growing irrelevance. The two ends of the American political spectrum are discovering this, and adjusting accordingly; the GOP having a decided advantage having tooled their party to cozy to every whim of the corporate elite and being a remarkably efficient purveyor of the propaganda and agenda these companies provide. Hence, reticence by the FDA to pull dangerous drugs from our shelves until there is enough consumer backlash to make leaving them on unprofitable. Liberals meanwhile, are still having trouble getting their old school socialists on board with what should be their vision of embracing technology and innovation and socially/environmentally conscious consumerism. Bill Clinton was the prototype of this style of Democrat, and old school insiders like John Kerry aren't able to duplicate his success.

Now back to what this all means for the war on terror in 2005 and beyond. Corporate heavies don't understand the beast they ride as well as they let on, so the two month surge in the U.S. markets following President Bush's victory has quietly ebbed, and the outflow of funds means maybe investors are starting to actually think a little. A weakening currency coupled with rising inflation, less than stellar sales until just before the holiday, and somberly and significantly, the greatest natural disaster the world has seen in my lifetime are more than setbacks, they combine into a panic button. The world financial market hasn't come to terms with the tsunami's impact yet, but by the end of March, Asia will be reeling again. Meanwhile, knowing Node readers are intelligent and can deduce things on their own, I will leave you with the outline and you can fill in the blanks:

world's most populous muslim nation + already existing and extensive terrorist network + blight of massive poverty and disease + inflows of untraceable cash as bank accounts are emptied - strained military/police resources - border security + chaos

and you can begin to see why Western nations (and India and China) are so keen on rebuilding and pushing the relief effort as fast as possible (Wahington was a little slower on the uptake than some others for some reason).

Long term? Commercialism wins. There has never in our species' history been a more efficient way to fully study human social behavior before we set Wal-Mart loose on the unsuspecting denizens of Arkansas. Amazon and Google are doing their part now as well, and by understanding the human condition, how we can be affected by subtle influences, the commercial system is now able to spread with an unprecedented speed. Terror? As Andrew mentions in the post before this, it wins also, terror comes from anomalies, outliers from the system, and since no system can eradicate all inefficiencies, we can only hope to contain them when they arise and stop them from infecting vital organs. What the war in Iraq is, and it's apparent now, is an attempt to strike at some of these anomalies by attacking an infected organ. It was the result of a few greedy companies and individuals who thought that they could further speed commercial growth by military means and the result created more terrorists, and has subsequently slowed the spread of global commercialism by straining the entire mechanism.

Domestically? More on that later.

2005-01-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since we've posted here at the Node -- working for the man is getting us down and various life events interfere (though not badly) with our free time. Anyway, I thought I'd put down some thoughts I've had recently about the Administration and its war in Iraq. Frankly the last couple of months I've been burned out, not really feeling that posting these rather anonymous missives would make me feel better about what I see as a fundamentally wrong situation.

But then my thoughts turned to science, and I began to see an analogy. I don't know that it's really an analogy so much as a basic truth. The Bush Administration is, as we're all aware, very science-adverse. As such they tend to act like some Catholic Church leaders did during the times of Galileo -- a misunderstanding of science, combined with a feeling of being threatened by it, has led to the Administration's current pogrom against what really is "Sound Science", as opposed to what they wish would pass for "Sound Science".

Now, it's not so much that the Administration rejects all science and objective analysis. Rather, it's that the set of rules upon which its views are founded are too simplistic to actually explain and therefore deal effectively with reality. I like to think of their view of the war in Iraq, for instance, as Newtonian. Not to shame the man or his name, it's just that in modern physics Newton's laws and methods will only get you so far. Indeed, it is true that there is a rather virulent anti-American strain of Islam. It is also true, however, that there is a very anti-American strain of fundamental Christianity (i.e., the doctrines preached by the Klu Klux Klan, certain militias, tax-dodgers, and others). There are anti-American strains of practically every kind of belief, they span the political spectrum and practically all religious traditions. You can find "-fascists" everywhere you look if you look around long enough (and at small enough groups). The part of this that seems to me to be Newtonian in nature is the First Law of the Bush Administration -- for every attack against America there will be a reaction, equal in kind.

The problem lies in questions of scale. Newtonian physics really starts to predict wrong things when considered at the level of atomic and subatomic particles. For these, the theories of electromagnetism and quantum physics are necessary to correctly adduce the outcomes of experiments. In a similar manner, the Bush Administration's First Law breaks down when we examine anything smaller than a nation or state. One can see that to the Administration (and apparently, also to a large number of Americans), striking at the "geographic heart" (to use a Cheney term) of terrorism suffices as the reaction to 9/11 along with the invasion of Afghanistan. However, just as a Newtonian explanation of a nuclear reaction wouldn't suffice to explain what was going on or stop the reaction, the Bush administration's response won't end terrorism. The failure to do the necessary groundwork and really understand the dynamics of the political situation in Iraq is akin to not working out the equations necessary to predict, and therefore control, a reaction involving subatomic particles. And thus we are stuck lobbing bombs into an already explosive situation.

I'm not sure if this failure to understand the dynamics of complex situations is a sign of intellectual laziness or an ideological belief that their understand of the situation is correct. There is a third, and more likely, explanation as well. The Administration has finely tuned its war to the political rhythms of the American public, and vise-versa. In that sense, the war is a reflection of the American psyche, and I therefore don't think it's much of an accomplishment that Bush won the election. Rather, it is a political reality sewn to reap exactly that outcome. As such, and viewed in that light, the Bush Administration is cold and calculating and hardly compassionate. Some argue that Bush himself is a very intelligent man. I have a problem believing that an intelligent individual could look at the situation in Iraq and produce the policies the Bush Administration has produced. However, witnessing the cult of personality that is Bush, I know that he's an intelligent individual who's surrounded himself with political operators who know how to play the American public. Therefore, to me the war in Iraq and the Administration's running of the war are more reactions to and tools for American politics. Thus we have a group of people employing Newtonian physics because it's the thing to do to win support of the American people.

Of course, I'd prefer to support a President who was capable of a quantum physics-like view of international politics. This means to me someone who is capable of understanding what policy is appropriate for what situation, regardless of the directions of the political winds. What amazes me is Bush's ability to hoodwink people into thinking he's being true to his beliefs, that's he's got some sort of ideological core that's driving his policy making. I'm afraid that under the hood, though, lurks only politics and a desire to wield power.

2004-11-30T21:56:00.000-08:00

It's time, I believe, for us all to go on Iran watch. I suspect that within a year or so the U.S. will be plowing full-steam-ahead in a bid to invade Iran. Here is why I think this will happen:

1.) The Iraq election timeline is set up to allow the U.S. to proclaim "victory" and focus its military efforts elsewhere. I believe that the calling up of the Ready Reserves (which include folks older than seventy) is meant to produce a token force that will sit by in Iraq while a new Iraq/Iran war plays out, instigated by the U.S. And yes, I do mean to say that I believe somewhat that Iraqi forces would be fighting with U.S. forces in such a war.

2.) The state of the world oil market is such that Iran's oil production is a tempting prize. The numbers can be found here. This gives U.S. oil needs in thousands of barrels per day. Note that the U.S. imports about nine million barrels per day. Iran's production capacity is somewhere around four million barrels per day, with a possible output (assuming pre-1979 production numbers are still attainable) of six million. That's a big chunk of oil, and it would go some way towards lessening U.S. dependence on Saudi Arabian oil. Now, I don't make this point to say that this is a good idea, only that the numbers are lucrative. While oil probably wouldn't (again) be the primary motivation, it's a bonus that can't be ignored. However, one caveat is that right now this production is all called for. I don't know that the U.S., in the event it invades Iran, would assume priority in receiving Iran's oil. However, there's nothing to say that such an invasion wouldn't be grounds for the U.S. to stake a claim to future production above and beyond current levels. Which, if the capacity is there, could be as high as two million barrels per day. Add to this the recent report by the OECD that world oil prices are trending steadily, and quickly, upwards.

3.) No political fallout for a future Republican presidential candidate. This was a fear of mine during the election -- that Mr. Bush would take advantage of the fact that he isn't running for reelection in 2008 to push a much more aggressive agenda. The raft of resignations and the slant of their replacements is such that Bush is trying to build a tighter ship. But why the emphasis on loyalty when political fallout isn't as dangerous? That's a red flag in my mind, indicating that the ship is tightening because of the planned voyage through rough waters. A war with Iran would certainly be rough going. As would reinstating the draft... Any future candidate could have enough water between himself and Bush (think Arnold or McCain) as to not be tainted by Bush's actions. Now does it make sense that during the RNC the mainstream speakers were all rising stars _and_ folks who weren't intimately associated with the Bush administration?

Only time will tell if the Bush administration is serious about a war with Iran, but I think a number of the indicators are there and that the groundwork is already starting to be laid. I suggest that over the next year or so you, the reader, keep an eye out for reports of incursions by forces of varying nationality into Iranian territory. I remember a website that was pretty accurate about listing such incursions before the war with Iraq, but I can't remember what it's called so I'll have to post the URL later. Nevertheless, we already know from Seymour Hersh that the Israelis are training Kurdish militants, and these guys might be conducting operations in Iran as I write this.

2004-11-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

From CNN:

'...The National Council of Resistance of Iran -- which is on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations --revealed satellite photographs this week it said showed a hidden nuclear plant in Iran, allegations the Iranians denied.'

'"This allegation is timed to coincide with the next meeting of the board of governors of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]," Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hussein Moussavian, said. "And every time just before the meeting there are these kind of allegations either from the United States or terrorist groups. And every time these allegations have proven to be false."'

'Powell, en route to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile, told reporters he had seen intelligence that appears to "corroborate" the resistance group's information.'

'And the State Department stands by Powell's comments, saying the information he cited offered a "firm basis for his remarks."'

'"The secretary did not misspeak," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said. "The secretary knows exactly what he was talking about. And there should be, I think, no question in our mind of casting doubt or walking it back."'

And here we go down the rabbit hole. I guess if, at a future date, someone asks if Powell "misspoke" we have specific confirmation that he did not misspeak. That's comforting...

2004-11-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

Quickie: Ohio voting machine gets it wrong. Not that this glitch would sway the election one way or another (it registerd about 3,000 votes for Bush that he didn't get).

In developing widely-used applications, it can be quite difficult to track down bugs. Inside the computer industry software testing standards vary widely from one company to another; I'm not familiar with any legal requirements for testing voting machines, but if there are none than we can expect these sorts of problems to continue into the future. One issue is the engineering cost of creating a fail-safe voting system; our Democracy deserves such a thing but no one wants to pay the capital to develop it. Politics are also involved, as are profit motives. Hopefully, over time, more reliable systems can be built. This goes for vote-tallying equipment (machines that read paper ballots) as well as individual voting kiosks. This may be an area for a bit of federal investment as a good-faith measure on the part of the government. There's little chance such a thing could pass under the Bush administration (they're too focused on privatization), but I'm of the opinion it'd be the best solution. It will take longer, be a bit more wasteful, and has the potential to become a bureaucratic nightmare. On the other hand, if you look at the "standards" community (think w3c, the folks who put out definitions of web standards like xml, html, etc.), I think they've been reasonably effective at producing standards that ensure most stuff works. I, for one, would propose that voting machines move towards a real-time OS model (instead of running on some version of Windows). Right now, based on what I've read in the newspapers (not an entirely accurate source), most systems use a standard operating system and off-the-shelf software components along with off-the-shelf hardware. That sort of design is more cost-effective, to be sure. However, A voting machine doesn't have to do much that's fancy and while making custom hardware and software would initially be more expensive, the peace of mind it could afford would, I think, be worth the expense.

2004-11-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

What happens next

As the terrorism and war on terrorism guy here at the Node, I'm going to focus for a minute on what to look for in the next year or so. Unfortunately, a majority of Americans didn't agree (I suspected wrong -- see the post dated 10/27 below) that John Kerry was the best candidate to deal with that issue. Some are suggesting, though, that many who were concerned about Iraq did vote for Kerry (hop over to here to read more about that), so that's a start. My focus in the near future is on several issues:

1.) The litany of litigation against the White House and the various congressional investigations that were slated to be disclosed after the election. These include the Valerie Plame investigation and the Iraq intelligence investigation's report on White House pressure on the CIA to produce a certain assessment of Iraqi intelligence before the war. We hope that even with the redrawn lines in Congress that these issues will be fully resolved and that all will know what's in the reports.

2.) The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The biggest issues now, and we're taking bets on how long the Administration can hold off resorting to a draft to replenish overspent U.S. forces.

3.) The possible wars against Iran and North Korea. Two great countries that don't taste great at all in combination with the war in Iraq. We're taking bets on possible wars against these members of the Axis of Evil as well. Will the administration also declare war against the humble Node? One never can tell, but remember that in times of revolution the intellectuals are the first to be executed.

4.) Finally, this is something I've been thinking about for awhile and posting about in other blog's comments -- the birth of a new Religious Left. Not exactly a war on terrorism issue, but it indirectly affects it because of the focus of the effort. We need a movement for left-leaning religious folks (myself included) as a repudiation to all that is immoral about the religious Right. I know Bran has some thoughts about this, too -- hopefully he'll share them. I suggest that some core issues of such a movement could be religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and how to morally address modern threats such as terrorism. For political and intellectual inspiration, I suggest that we consider Barak Obama, whose language is particualry effective at reaching religious citizens.

These issue and more are what I'm going to focus on in the coming year and into the 2006 election season. Stay tuned, because the Node will continue to resist the badly-run "war on terrorism" in whatever way we can.

2004-10-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land" (George W. Bush)

"Or maybe you'd say nothing of the kind" (The New Yorker, "A Failed Presidency")

This will be my last post before the election, barring a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the capture of Osama Bin Laden, or both. If it's your first time visiting the Node, I hope you'd take a spin through our archives and read what we've had to say about this Administration's "war on terrorism". I've tried to hew to as non-partisan a tone as possible, although it became apparent early on that the facts would not be flattering to the Bush administration. Before you do that, though, here's a couple of paragraphs from the New Yorker's endorsement of John Kerry, their first endorsement in the magazine's 80-year-plus history:

'. . . In Bush’s rhetoric, the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, with precision bombings of government buildings in Baghdad, and ended exactly three weeks later, with the iconic statue pulldown. That military operation was indeed a success. But the cakewalk led over a cliff, to a succession of heedless and disastrous mistakes that leave one wondering, at the very least, how the Pentagon’s civilian leadership remains intact and the President’s sense of infallibility undisturbed. The failure, against the advice of such leaders as General Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, to deploy an adequate protective force led to unchallenged looting of government buildings, hospitals, museums, and—most inexcusable of all—arms depots. ("Stuff happens," Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld explained, though no stuff happened to the oil ministry. [emphasis mine]) The Pentagon all but ignored the State Department’s postwar plans, compiled by its Future of Iraq project, which warned not only of looting but also of the potential for insurgencies and the folly of relying on exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi; the project’s head, Thomas Warrick, was sidelined. The White House counsel’s disparagement of the Geneva Conventions and of prohibitions on torture as "quaint" opened the way to systematic and spectacular abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American-run prisons--a moral and political catastrophe for which, in a pattern characteristic of the Administration’s management style, no one in a policymaking position has been held accountable. And, no matter how Bush may cleave to his arguments about a grand coalition ("What’s he say to Tony Blair?" "He forgot Poland!"), the coalition he assembled was anything but grand, and it has been steadily melting away in Iraq’s cauldron of violence.'

. . .

'The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.'

That's the question I ask, and resoundingly the answer in this election is John Kerry. I suspect a majority of Americans will agree.

2004-10-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Another example of the wonders done by the U.S. when it failed to secure weapons caches after the invasion of Iraq. From the New York Times:

'BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.'

'The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Saturday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.' [Italics mine]

Let's review. The U.N. had, for years, been monitoring some of the most dangerous materials possessed by Iraq. These included precision machining equipment, explosives, potentially deadly chemicals, etc. They monitored Iraq's store of radioactive materials. Now, however, this stuff has disappeared in the looting. And we're supposed to believe that the U.N. is ineffective? To the contrary, the U.N. has, all along, kept track of these potentially deadly materials and kept them from being used. Because of the inspections, Hussein was unable to produce nuclear or biological weapons. He was effectively disarmed by the U.N. While it wasn't a perfect system, it did keep a lid on the potentially volatile situation that could develop should these materials be left unattended. Now, however, we have to deal with the very real prospect that someone, say Al-Zarqawi (whose recent love-letter video to Osama Bin Laden was truly inspiring...), may have this stuff and certainly knows how to use it. At this rate, the enemy will be better armed than U.S. troops in Iraq before John Kerry takes his place as President of the United States in 2005.

2004-10-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart Rocks. I'm glad someone has the nerve to tell it straight to the folks on "Crossfire". He gets my "Node of Evil Action Award" for getting on CNN and tearing into their fake "news" schtick.

2004-10-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

Good thing the IAEA is watching out for U.S. interests, because the Bush Administration certainly isn't:

'VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog is worried the U.S.-led war aimed at disarming Iraq may have unleashed a proliferation crisis if looters have sold equipment that can be used to make atomic weapons, Western diplomats said.'

'The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitored Saddam Hussein's nuclear sites before last year's Iraq war, said on Monday equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons have been disappearing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed.'

'"If some of this stuff were to end up in Iran, some people would be very concerned," a diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters. "The IAEA's big concern would be profiteering, people who would sell this stuff with no regard for who is buying it.". . . '

The looting that occured at the start of the war was the biggest tactical error made by the U.S. in Iraq. The looting armed the insurgency, and now the IEDs and other explosive devices killing Americans and Iraqis alike are demonstrating this fact on a daily basis. Certain civilian leaders in the Pentagon are responsible for the policy that allowed the looting to happend (we remember Rumsfeld brushed off the looting at the beginning of the war as unimportant). These leaders should be brought to account for negligently endangering U.S. troops. More from the article:

'. . . Satellite imagery shows entire buildings in Iraq that once housed high-precision equipment have been dismantled, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.'

'British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he believed most of the removal of materials and equipment took place in the chaos that reigned shortly after the invasion last spring.'

'"It is not clear, but it appears, and I'm seeking more details after receipt of the IAEA report overnight, that most of the unauthorized removal took place in the immediate aftermath of the major conflict in March and April last year," Straw told parliament. . . .'

2004-10-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Superman

2004-10-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

To expand a little on Andrew's debate analyses, I will offer a few thoughts. First off, despite the GOP's and MoveOn's belief that interpreting winners and losers is merely a matter of post debate spin, and whoever gets their guys to water cooler first wins, the debates themselves do cast deep and long standing impressions in voters' minds. As Andrew pointed out in his post last week, the first debate was not only won by Kerry, whose appearance and deportment, and clear, articulated answers served him well and won over many voters, but I would argue that separately, it was also "lost" by the President's strange willingness to mimic Al Gore's mistakes of four years ago, and this has been born out in public opinion polls since then.

Here is my second hypothesis (not mine only, you will probably be able to find these same thoughts elsewhere), and this is where last night and Tuesdsay's V.P. tilt come into play: the debates are actually a single event stretched out over many days, and the only portions that really matter are the first hour of the first debate, and if anyone is still watching, the last hour of the last debate. In between, there might be memorable contrarian moments, such as Lloyd Bentsen's scorching of Dan Quayle in 1988, or President Clinton's interesting moral convolutions on Gennifer Flowers and marijuana. In the end, the middle portions will only affect individual issue voters, as illustrated last night by the gentleman who asked about the President's environmental record, or the woman whose query of John Kerry's abortion stance led to his least effective answer of the evening. As you could probably tell, the voters represented by both of these particular issues are not likely to fall into the "undecided" category at this point in the race or for that matter at any point in the race. So instead, images of a petulant and beligerent President that were created by the first debate are reinforced as he railroads through the moderator, they are extended down the ticket as the Vice president looks grumpy and skulking next to the bright and happy challenger, and these images can only be slightly offset by an equally poor showing by Kerry.

Four years ago, the impressions of Al Gore were set by his audible sighs in the first debate, and his subsequent and much improved performances in the follow-ups were discounted and in fact used against him by Bush 's campaign as evidence of Gore's shifting with the political winds. This time around, I believe the tables have turned on the President, last night he took to mimicking John Kerry's use of note taking during the opposition's time, rather than making disgusted faces. This is a visual concession of a lack of leadership. His self deprecating humor about sometimes wanting to scowl only works in partisan rooms, he could ask Howard Dean how it plays after his infamous "scream" derailed the one-time Democratic front-runner's campaign in Iowa. The debates therefore, are already all but over, John Kerry won, and more importantly, President Bush lost. If Kerry continues on to take the White House from a sitting President, Mr. Bush can look to last Thursday as the one night he should like to have back. Interesting he didn't mention this when given an opportunity in his last question of the evening to name three mistakes he personally made. (Well, maybe not that interesting -as is typical, he preferred to use the question to once again pass responsibility for mistakes to others, i.e. I hired so and so and he made the mistakes and I'd prefer not to embarrass him.)

One caveat, I said that I thought the first hour of the first debate and last hour of the last debate were the most important. I should clarify that: there have been instances where a candidate late in the campaign is able to reach out to connect to voters in a deeply personal way, often through invoking pets or dead relatives or similarly universal warm-fuzzy bringing totems. Right now, neither the President nor John Kerry have been able to make this emotional connection.with the American public (The President has done it before, the last time amidst the wreckage of the World Trade Center, or perhaps as late as his first State of the Union speech following September 11) If he is able to do it again in the last debate, and I think he would have to include an admission of culpability in some issues and refrain from trying to relive the last the time he was able to make that connection, the President could turn things around. However, I feel that John Kerry has it within himself to also connect in such a way, and I suspect that if either candidate is able to have such a moment in these last few weeks, the race could be re-decided in a single evening.

2004-10-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

Presidential Debate Two -- The Return of the Democrat

I'm still trying to parse the debate a bit, but one of the things that struck me was how Kerry has been able to reach out to voters of all stripes and appeal to his base at the same time. We at the Node like this ability, because solving real-world problems requires that kind of thinking. A President who is serious about pursuing terrorists needs to know how to let people understand that there's a difference between fighting terrorists and declaring war on Islam. Bush has been unable to effectively articulate this distinction, despite his attempts to the contrary. As I've watched and read about the debates, it's become apparent that John Kerry really does believe he can reach across all those divides that keep the U.S. from acting effectively in the world. Whether he can actually deliver is an open question, but the preliminary results look promising. In that sense he is, to me, alot like Howard Dean, whose problem-solving abilities were very apparent.

Some time ago I wrote about "see-saw politics." The basic idea is that there would be a very strong partisan reaction to the Bush administration, and that that reaction would in turn inspire a strong partisan reaction to the Democrats, and etc. This situation, I believe, is not good for making policy because there's no stability. If the sitting President passes a number of bills that the other party finds odious, the other party will, once it gains power, do all it can to counteract those bills. The threat is that important legislation a.) won't get a proper hearing based on the facts on the ground, and b.) if it is effective, will be repealed in a wave of partisan backlash against everything associated with the last President.

I think John Kerry has the ability to cross this divide and provide the U.S. with the stability necessary to effectively tackle the important issues. My opinion on this isn't fully-formed, but he shows infinitely more promise on this front than President Bush.

2004-10-01T01:09:00.000-07:00

Presidential debate wrap-up

I don't usually post much about the race here at the Node, but after tonight's performace I want to put something down here for the record. By every common measure of a debate (and truly, a debate is like boxing -- there is a winner and a loser), Kerry won. Bush lost this debate, fair and square. Kerry was better prepared, had flawless logic, was more articulate, and generally wiped the floor with Bush. Bush was inarticulate, ill-prepared, and frighteningly devoid of facts for a sitting President who has access to all that supposed "intelligence". Since most of the usual suspects don't seem to want to call this one one way or another, I'll go ahead and do it for them:

Kerry 1, Bush 0

...CNN agrees.

2004-09-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Please write to your representatives about this. It does not matter if you're a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertaria, a Green, etc. -- this is a vitally important issue for our national security. Some (not all) Republicans in Congress are attempting to include language in H.R. 10 (which is otherwise concerned with the 9/11 commission report) that would exempt those deemed as "terrorists" from the protections of the U.N. convention on torture and allow their extradition to foreign countries to be tortured. It is a very nasty piece of legislation that will greatly weaken U.S. security worldwide.

I can't believe I even have to write about this, I was under the impression that all Americans were against the use of torture. I guess I was mistaken.

2004-09-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Chain of Command Book review, pt. 2: Regime Change

'There are many who believe George Bush is a liar, a President who knowingly and deliberately twists facts for political gain. But lying would indicate an understanding of what is desired, what is possible, and how best to get there. A more plausible explanation is that words have no meaning for this President beyond the immediate moment, and so he believes that his mere utterance of the phrases makes them real. It is a terrifying possibility.' [Seymour Hersh, "Chain of Command," pg. 367]

Hersh, who documented so well Nixon's lies in "Price of Power", is one of the few people in a position to actually make that judgement. Those of us who view "Price of Power" as a statement about Nixon (and Kissinger) the man therefore may take Hersh's assessment seriously. While Hersh has a reputation as a "muckraker", he's extremely well-qualified and well-sourced to do it, and as a result his writing reveals much more than just stories about people exercising poor judgement. His books tend to flesh out the intangibles of a person's character that are really only visible through that person's judgements and actions. Since the Bush administration is one of the most secretive in U.S. history, that's sort of judgement's been hard to make. Until now, we've had to rely on a carefully scripted and polished public presentation of Bush and his administration. Now, we have the behind-the-scenes history of U.S. dealings with the world since 9/11. As the paragraph quoted above indicates, this history is not very flattering to Bush.

One of the major themes in "Chain of Command" is the lack of control Bush seems to have over the bureaucracy. It appears that he's ceeded large swaths of decisionmaking power to his cabinet officials, especially in the Pentagon. Among these, several have simply not done their job. The most glaring example of this is Condelezza Rice, who should be exercising more control over the various agencies that fall under her stewardship, but whose bickering has endangered many lives and led to numerous operational blunders in the War on Terrorism.

The lack of leadership from our leaders has left America in an extremely precarious position. Or, to quote Robert Gallucci:

'"We haven't been this vulnerable since the British burned Washington in 1814."' [ibid, pg. 311]

The Bush Administration is portrayed here as inexperienced, ideologically rigid, and dangerously incompetent in dealing with the threats that now face the United States. The failure to contain Pakistan's proliferation efforts, the burning of bridges with Syria, the narrow focus on getting politically valuable targets while ignoring the necessary groundwork to actually win in Afghanistan and Iraq, the airlift of high-level Pakistani ISI and Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership out of the Tora Bora region -- all these point to an administration that is too concerned with its own skin to make the tough decisions necessary to win wars. While none of these are easy situations to deal with, the Bush Administration has consistently ignored the advice of the most respected and knowledgable professionals inside and outside of government. The Administration has done this in pursuit of its goals, whether those be Rumsfeld's insistence that the war in Iraq could be fought with mostly Special Forces and airpower, or whether ideological opposition to Syria precluded the U.S. from receiving valuable intelligence about Al-Qaeda.

When I first started reading "Chain of Command", I though the title was rather odd as I'd been under the impression that it would mostly be about the abuse at Abu-Ghraib. While there is much about Abu-Ghraib in the opening chapter, it doesn't pop up again until the very end of the book. This might be confusing to some who are looking for a clearly-defined storyline to follow, and Hersh's story tends to jump around. To be sure, most of the writing here is a compendium of Hersh's articles in the New Yorker from the last few years. Since those were written as seperate pieces, it is understandably difficult to draw them together into a coherent narrative. So, do not read "Chain of Command" and expect to get an a through z story that culminates in the Abu-Ghraib abuses. Instead, it is best to view it as an alternative (and much more realistic) account of Bush Administration's dealings with the rest of the world since it took office. I should note, though, that the Bush Administration isn't the only one that dropped the ball. Clinton's administration also made several key mistakes, such as not pursuing U.S. intelligence assets in Afghanistan and continually sidestepping Pakistan's proliferation efforts, that contributed to the current state of the world.

Therefore, "Chain of Command" is the story of how the U.S. government has been hijacked by a few ideologically motivated individuals. The results of their policies are the current scandals and quagmires that endanger the United State's security. Therefore, as Hersh points out in his Epilogue, there needs to be a change in administration.

A quick note: Some of you may have noticed that I included in the title of Part 1 a reference to "racism". Hersh touches on this briefly, noting that the second-class status of arab immigrants in Europe contributes to their radicalization. I've been mulling it over, and I think it's appropriate to say that the label "terrorist" is often applied with racial overtones attached. The ANC were "terrorists", so labeled by the Apartheid government of South Africa and its supporters in the U.S. I'd originally planned to weave that theme more into my review of the book, but since Hersh doesn't touch on it much after that brief mention I decided that it wouldn't be appropriate. However, I do think racism plays a role in the U.S. in determining who, exactly, is a "terrorist" and not just an "extremist" or a "fundamentalist". Since I've also been reading Joseph Lelyveld's book "Move Your Shadow" recently, I've seen echoes of anti-terrorist rhetoric in South Africa's justification for the Apartheid system. There's a synergy of sorts in reading these two books at the same time that poses some interesting questions, but since it's outside the scope of Hersh's book, I've included that discussion here instead of in the main body of the review.

2004-09-19T23:20:00.000-07:00

Chain of Command book review, Part 1: Terrorism, Communism, Capitalism, Racism

As promised, here's the first part of a several-part series of reviews for Seymour Hersh's book "Chain of Command". I'm not a literary fiend like my co-blogger Bran so I'm not going to do alot of style review. If you've read Hersh's work in the New Yorker, you'll be familiar with his general approach. He's spare, to-the-point, and does a good job at keeping his prose out of the line of fire of the narritive. These, in my opinion, are all good things. Besides, all the really flowery writers in International Relations and Foreign Policy, such as Henry Kissinger, are dangerous.

As the headline here suggest, Hersh gives us the big picture of the road leading to the abuses at Abu-Ghraib. Full disclosure: I'm about half-way through the book, so for the most part I'm still getting backstory. This is important because those four -isms mentioned above play a large part in the history of the U.S.' current troubles with the Middle East. So, what do we get from Hersh vis-a-vis the story behind the War on Terrorism?

First off, we get alot of operational details, all of which serve to drive home a few main points:

US. actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980's (scroll down for some snippets on those issues from our Labor Day Flash Back Weekend posts) set the stage for Islamic terrorism to take hold in Afghanistan. Essentially, it went like this:

a.) The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.
b.) In response to this invasion, and with the election of President Reagan and a marked rightward shift in foreign policy in comparison to the Carter administration, the U.S. courts Pakistan as its main ally in the region. It does this for one big reason, namely:
c.) The U.S. hatches a plan to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan and to increase U.S. influence in the region to counter-balance India's ties to the Soviets. Pakistan is key to the success of this plan.
d.) The U.S. funnels hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid to the Mujahedin fighting in Afghanistan via Pakistan. The Reagan administration also chooses to ignore or downplay Pakistani nuclear weapon development.
e.) Pakistan takes advantage of this opportunity to develop nuclear weapons and to spread nuclear technology around the world. Pakistani ISI agents also use the huge influx of cash to support anti-Communist _and_ anti-American forces in Afghanistan, specifically supporting those forces that are anti-American in sentiment.
f.) The U.S. was fully aware of these developments; however, counterbalancing the Soviets was the big issue and thus Pakistan was allowed to proceed unhindered.
g.) The Soviets leave Afghanistan (after being successfully routed by the Mujahedin with a major assist from American arms and money) and the Cold War comes to an end.
h.) Having achieved its objective, the U.S. abandons Afghanistan and ceases all CIA operations there. In the process, it leaves Afghanistan in chaos and burns potentially important intelligence bridges in the process. This happens under both President George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, thus no particular political party is to blame for this glaring oversight. It's important to understand the impact this had on Afghanistan's trust of the U.S., something that Hersh explains quite clearly and quotes one source as saying that it may have been the largest strategic mistake the U.S. made at the end of the Cold War.

So, with anti-American sentiment on the rise in Afghanistan in the early 90's, combined with Pakistan's selective support for anti-American elements in the Mujahedin, we get a better picture of the dynamics that led to the ascencion of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. All of this is there in Hersh's account, although it does help to have some background knowledge before diving in. I must point out that the above analysis simplifies things a bit -- reality is rarely easy to sum up in bullet points. After reading and thinking about the war on terrorism for several years, that's the basic gist of developments with respect to Pakistan and Afghanistan as I see it. Someone with more experience and knowledge may come to a different conclusion, but for the most part the U.S. allowed its ideological anti-Communist blinders to keep realities on the ground in Pakistan from interfering with policy decisions.

Hersh does an excellent job of highlighting another very important point, somewhat related to h above. The U.S. was drastically unprepared for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of intelligence, the U.S. didn't have assets in Iraq after 1998 other than Ahmed Chalabi's associates. In Afghanistan, there was no one. Language skills were, and are, woefully inadequate to deal with running wars in two countries where English is not the first, or even second, language. Throughout the war in Iraq, the U.S. has had little to no actual intelligence on the insurgency. America has long neglected the human intelligence necessary to carry out such operations.

The big picture drawn by Hersh, therefore, is that a woeful lack of preparedness on the part of the U.S. has contributed enormously to the pressures which led the Bush administration to authorize torture methods for use in the war on terrorism. That such methods were used as torture is not in dispute -- the shocking pictures of Abu Ghraib along with the mountain of evidence provided via first-hand accounts from prisoners and from human rights organizations were enough to prove it. The temptation to try and get easy intelligence via interrogation was simply too much, considering the pressure to deliver suspects and take out Sadddam. Of course, much of this pressure originated from the White House (as we're bound to learn when the second half of the 9/11 commission's report -- the half that deals specifically with administration pressure on the intelligence community to support going to war with Iraq -- is released after the elections).

I will have more to say as I get further along in the book. My preliminary review grade is "highly recommended".

2004-09-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

That's the new Hersh book, out Monday. We'll have a book review by the end of next week. Already the Pentagon is on the defensive. Reminds us a bit of one of the Pentagon's employees, Richard Perle...:

'In a statement posted on its Web site, the Pentagon said: "Based on media inquiries, it appears that Mr. Seymour Hersh's upcoming book apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources."'

'The statement added that several investigations so far "have determined that no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have authorized or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib."'

'That is essentially the same reaction issued by the Pentagon when Mr. Hersh first reported, in May, that Mr. Rumsfeld, with White House approval, established a secret program under which commandos would capture and interrogate suspected terrorists with few if any constraints, and that eventually that program's reach extended into the Abu Ghraib prison.'

2004-09-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

There's another Flash Back in the works, but I've got some other projects which require my attention so it will have to wait. It's about U.S. policy towards South Africa, so you know where I'm heading. I plan to (time permitting) continue posting articles about U.S. efforts at spreading "Democracy" around the world. I think it's instructive to review that history, especially at a time when the Republican party specifically is bent on using the "positive" influence of the U.S. in spreading Democracy as a campaign issue. It's not merely a partisan issue -- plenty of Democrats found themselves on the wrong side of history at various times. However, there is a striking trend among the more conservative elements of the Republican party of misreading the arrow of history and making bad policy choices as a result. The current Bush Administration is guilty of this, and it's because the Administration has paid more attention to the extreme rather than the moderate elements of the Republican party. As a result, America is paying the price. In the event Bush wins the election (an outcome we highly doubt), I hope he listens more to the moderates.

2004-09-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

Another Flashback Labor Day Weekend special in a moment, but first, a Node of Evil MUST READ: In the current issue of Harper's Magazine, Naomi Klein's piece entitled Baghdad Year Zero highlights the downfall of the administration's Iraqi reconstruction pipe dream. Their website doesn't allow for online reading of articles, but this one's definitely worth checking out. A teaser:

... Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq's non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announces that these firms would be privatized immediately. "Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands," he said, "is essential for Iraq's economic recovery." It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Of course, things didn't turn out quite the way the Neo-cons imagined, barrier after barrier got in the way, from the easily identifiable already in place (International laws prohibiting acts like Bremer's) to those that should have been forseen (the "resistance" by Iraqi's to having their jobs privatized and likely lost.) The end result of course is the quagmire that we currently have. Please, particularly if you are in the "the administration had no plan for post war Iraq, and that is why it's falied" camp, read this article. The truth is the administration had a plan, a terribly ill-conceived idealistic plan that was bound to fail and create bitter resentment against Americans for years afterwards.

Alright, back to our labor-day flashback weekend. The date: December 20, 1989, the place: Panama, the Operation: Just Cause. Yeah you remember it, AC/DC blaring at full blast all through the night as we topple a ruthless freedom hating dictator (never mind that we were the ones to bring him to power in the first place) Manuel Noriega had gone haywire and we had to get him out to protect the most important strip of land that side of Vegas. George H.W. Bush sends in a new breed of military known as PSYOPS to fight a new breed of bloodless war. Unlike the current battle and countless other wrecks of US foreign policy, the United States has had little ambition in Panama besides the security of that all important canal. The result thus far? Well thanks to google, let's give a little timeline:

1992 "We have problems with water.., we have problems with schools, we have problems with hospitals and that cannot be fixed in two and a half years."

1994 Presidential and legislative elections are held, Panama adopts a money laundering law and American rich people are forced to go to the Caymans for their tax-shelters. The gap between rich and poor widens, but despite this, Panama continues to rebound thanks in large part to the autonomy allowed the country by the Clinton administration. Unlike Iraq, where American multinationals tried to control the transition, the state is left largely to determine its own destiny.

1995 The link is to the Interhemispheric Resource Center, and their review of the six years of reconstruction. Note the figures in the box, (50 percent of Panamanians in poverty, 18 percent unemployment.) The Clinton policies are moving slowly if at all, still Panama remains relatively stable.

1997 According to the Heritage foundation, the Clinton administration had missed a lot of opportunities in Latin America, most of his failures as far as I can tell involved getting Congress to approve various things like NAFTA fast track approval and getting Castro out of Cuba. Of course, the conservative backed foundation for some reason doesn't seem inclined to point to the Republican Congress's unwillingness as the main problem as Clinton really had pursued many of those steps. While holding my breath and waiting for them to do a similar piece about how George W. has failed more dramatically in nearly every category mentioned here (except for the fast track, which Congress suddenly thought was okay for a GOP President.) I take note that in 1997, rich Americans' biggest interest in Panama was the construction of military bases.

1999: unemployment drops to 11.8 percent, poverty levels of 40.5 percent, 90 percent have access to safe drinking water. Slow but steady progress, despite this, opposition conservatives are elected in nationwide elections.

2000 George Tenet and the CIA hatch yet another anti-Castro scheme, this one involving an assassination attempt while he's in Panama. It fails, the trigger-men are arrested, convicted and sentenced to eight years. Venezuela demands exradition.

2002 16% unemployment, the gap between rich and poor widens, the conservative agenda flags under the weight of the global recession.

2004 Forty percent of Panamanians live in poverty, fourteen and a half percent are unemployed (it seems high, but actually that's roughly equal to most American urban cores, although the Panamanian underemployment rate is much much higher) and a new socialist leaning President and son of Panama's pre-Noriega dictator has just been sworn in. According to our own Secretary of State, Torrijos has a "dynamic" plan for Panama's future including closer ties to Cuba. Funny how in Venezuela (the largest oil reserve in the Americas) this sort of behavior is seen as corrupt and degenerate, while in Panama, it is seemingly lauded. So long as the canal stays open and people don't pay attention to America's failed policies, it's all good. Just before the turnover, the outgoing president Mireya Moscoso pardons the four Castro plotters creating an interesting rift at a time when ideologically speaking, the three important Meso-American countries are coming closer than they have been in a long time.

Speaking of all good, Noriega has become a devout baptist in his time in American prisons. Yes, Operation: Just Cause, where if we can save one corrupt dictator's soul, a country's entire prosperity for decades to come is worth sacrificing. Now if only Saddam Hussein could be born again, and then Operation: Iraqi Freedom might also be deemed a rousing success.

2004-09-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Flash Backs Continue -- Afghanistan and Pakistan

We're back with more hits, this time a couple of 'graphs from Case 365a, published by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, on U.S.-Pakistani relations immediately following the Cold War. This paragraph comes from the background information. To wit, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the 80s:

'As part of its worldwide effort to put pressure on the Soviet Union, the new Republican administration in Washington began a program of covert assistance to the mujahedin under the Reagan Doctrine. American aid to these anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" grew steadily in size and visibility until it reached almost $300 million a year by the mid-1980s. The aid was distributed to the insurgents by the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI favored Islamic insurgent groups who were as opposed to the West as they were to Moscow and who had links with terrorist organizations in the Muslim Middle East. At first the program was designed mainly to keep the resistance in business and contain further Soviet advances, but in 1984, hawks in Congress allocated $75-80 million to Pakistan for the express purpose of forcing a Soviet withdrawl. Then in 1986, Congress again escalated U.S. involvement by persuading the administration to provide shoulder-fired Sttinger antiaircraft missiles to the mujahedin, effectively neutralizing the helicopter gunships that were at the heart of the Soviet counterinsurgency strategy. This American aid was among the factors that by 1986 had brought Mikhail Gorbachev to refer to Afghanistan as a "bleeding wound" and to agree in 1988 to a staged withdrawl from the war.'

Not only did the U.S. funnel money to the mujahedin through Pakistan (we remind our readers of certain now-famous terrorists with ties to the mujahedin. That decision to give them shoulder-launched missiles doesn't look quite so good in retrospect), but it fought year after year to certify Pakistan as free from nuclear weapons, even though it was not:

'...In the summer of 1987, for example, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, Arshad V. Pervez, was arrested in Philadelphia while attempting to bribe U.S. customs agents in an apparent violation of the Solarz ammendment. Pervez worked for a firm in Lahore headed by a Pakistani general and was seeking a license for the export of high-strength maraging steel, a material essential to one method of producing fissile material. Inconveniently, his arrest came just as Congress was considering the Reagan Administration's request for a six-year, follow-on program of $4.02 billion in aid to Pakistan and a renewal of the Symington-Glenn wavier needed to make this renewal possible. In the uproar caused by the arrest, Congress not only failed to pass the new waiver before the earlier one expired but also suspended American aid for six weeks while the Reagan Administration tried to get further assurances from Pakistan.'

'While aid languished, arguments flew back and forth. State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said that the cutoff "sends the wrong signal about the continuing U.S. commitment to Pakistan's security." Senator Glenn [sponsor of a nuclear nonproliferation bill], worriedabout the effect that ignoring Pakistan's violations could have on the credibility of other U.S. nonproliferation efforts, argued that "if the price for sustaining this partnership is to encourage the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide, then the price is too high." Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) thought that Pakistan would follow its national interests on Afghanistan regardless of what the United States did: "We are paying a high price, both in dollars and in non-proliferation policy, to reward Pakistan for what it would do anyway." The Reagan Administration had contended for years that offering military assistance and a strong defense commitment would provide Islamabad a sense of security that was perhaps the best and perhaps the only way to convince Pakistan to forego a nuclear option... Representative Solarz summed it all up as a classic struggle between competing objectives of "whether we attach more importance to our nuclear nonproliferation objectives or to the support of our Afghanistan policies.'

Nuclear nonproliferation (boy, that's a big word there) or supporting the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan. Who do you think won that particular policy battle? If you guessed "Afghanistan", you get a cookie:

'As might have been predicted in 1987, Afghanistan won. In mid-December, conferees on the appropriations bill granted Pakistan a two and one-half year waiver from nuclear nonproliferation laws, the same day Arshad Prevez was convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and of making false statements to obtain an export license. On January 15, 1988, President Reagan invoked the waiver authority to bypass both the Symington-Glenn legislation and the Solarz amendment, arguing that "disrupting one of the pillars of the U.S. relationship with Pakistan would be counter-productive for the strategic interests of the United States, destabilizing for South Asia, and unlikely to achieve the nonproliferation objectives sought by the sponsors." Representative Markey's conclusion was that the "history of Pakistan and U.S. non-proliferation law is violation, violation, violation from Pakistan and waiver, waiver, waiver from the United States."'(all paragraphs from Terry L. Deibel, "Pakistan In the Bush Years: Foreign Aid and Foreign Influence", Case 365A, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.)

Violation violaton violation, waver waver waver -- sound familiar in context with Pakistan? I don't think I need to remind our sharp readers that Pakistan was recently caught with its hand in the cookie jar, selling nuclear weapons information under the table to people like Iran and, possibly, North Korea. We also note that the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan turned out to be a bit more committed to their anti-American cause than most Republicans thought at the time. Those forward-thinking Republicans, so strong on the issue of national defense.

2004-09-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Flash-Back Labor Day Weekend continues...

We look now at political posters, those loveliest of lovely homilies to truth. Here are the texts from two of those posters. And who would've thought conservatives would target big oil?

'WANTED/For Supplying $2 Billion-Plus/of Aid and Comfort Annually to/America's Soviet Enemy in/Cuban-Occupied Angola./[picture of George Keller]/GEORGE KELLER/Chairman of the Board/Chevron Corporation [left side of text, Gulf oil logo. Right side of text, Chevron oil logo]/ IF YOU SEE THIS MAN, ASK HIM WHY HE IS SUBSIDIZING/THE KREMLIN'S AFRICAN MILITARY BUILDUP.'

----------

'[Gulf oil symbol, featuring prominently the word "Gulf"]... FUELS/ANGOLAN/SLAVERY/ [picture of gas pump with Gulf oil symbol] / [on the right, a big picture of Jonas Savimbi, on the left, the following quote from Savimbi] "EVERY DOLLARS WORTH OF/GULF GAS YOU PUMP INTO YOUR/CAR MEANS MORE MONEY FOR GULF/TO PUMP INTO A DICTATORSHIP/THAT IS KILLING MY PEOPLE. GULF/OIL HELPS PROP UP THE MARXIST/REGIME IN ANGOLA WHICH IS/SLAUGHTERING MY BROTHERS AND/SISTERS. I FIGHT FOR JUSTICE AND/A FREE ANGOLA WHILE GULF FUNDS/OUR SLAVEMASTERS. YOU MUST/HELP US!"/[below picture of Savimbi and the quote] BOYCOTT GULF NOW!/[name and address of sponsoring organization] SAVE THE OPPRESSED PEOPLE COMMITTEE/1338 G STREET S.E. WASHINGTON, DC 20003'(both ads from The New York Times, Thursday January 20, 1986)

These ads were run with a story on the pressure on Chevron and Gulf oil to get out of Angola. A range of organizations with names like "Gulf Out of Angola Project" worked to further the conservative's effort to widen popular and governmental support for Savimbi. We close with two paragraphs from the article:

'R. Con Kirkwood, the 26-year-old organizer of the Gulf Out of Angola Project, said he is unswayed by Chevron's argument that foreign oil companies would replace Gulf were it to withdraw. "Let them have blood on their hands," he said.'

'Added another young activist, Jeffery Pandin: "Unlike some conservatives, we're no friends of big business."'

Ah, the 80's. Such moral clarity...

2004-09-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Flash-Back Labor Day Weekend At The Node

We welcome one and all to Flash-Back Labor Day weekend, where we'll be covering the best and brightest of past U.S. efforts to spread "Democracy". We start with a mid-80's gem, straight out of neon-pink big hair heaven, featuring that late, great 80's one-hit-wonder Jonas Savimbi. And you thought Ahmed Chalabi was the first to record a hit record on the Mighty Wurlitzer:

'In what is becoming a crescendo to the acrimonious debate over U.S. policy towards Angola, Washington is preparing to play host for two weeks to the man who stands in the center of the controversy -- a burly, bearded guerrilla chieftain of considerable charm named Jonas Malheiro Savimbi'

'Heralded by President Reagan as an exemplary "freedom fighter" and embraced by conservatives as "the Che Guevara of the right," Savimbi is vilified as a "terrorist" by the Soviet and Cuban-backed Marxist government he has fought for a decade. To most of black Africa, he is a "stooge" of South Africa's white rulers.'

...

'Conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundataion, the American Conservative Union and the American Security Council, are orchestrating a welcome for Savimbi unlike anything Washingon has ever seen for an African guerrilla leader. After his arrival Tuesday, Savimbi will use his appearances before the groups and elsewhere as a platform from which to launch his plea for military assistance in the United States.'

...

'Savimbi is already assured a Sunday night segment on CBS' "60 Minutes," followed by appearnces on ABC's "Nightline" and PBS' "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," as well a possible cover story in Time magazine. He is giving the keynote speech at the Washington banquet of the American Conservative Union one night after Reagan addresses the group.'

...

'Leading the pro-Savimbi campaign in the House has been Rep. Mark D. Siljander, a conservative Republican from Michigan, who has gathered 109 cosponsors for a bill that would provide Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) with $27 million in open military assistance.'

'In the Senate, Malcom Wallop (R-Wyo.) on Dec. 10 introduced an ammendment cosponsored with 12 colleagues that would have authorized $50 million in military and other assistance to Savimbi, although the measure died for procedural reasons.'

'On the same day, three key Senate members tried to pass a resolution of support for Savimbi intended to lead to an aid program.'

'Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chariman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. David F. Durenberger (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sponsored the measure, which favored providing "material assistance" to Savimbi early this year if the Marxist Angolan government refused to engage in "good faith negotiations" with UNITA and continued to prepare a new offesive against the guerrillas. The resolution was defeated 39 to 58.'(The Washington Post, January 26, 1986)

-----------

'The promotion of Mr. Savimbi is, of course, partly a product of the times; it would have not worked without a conservative Administration pledged, as Mr. Reagan said in his State of the Union Message Tuesday, "to support with moral and material assistance" the cause of "freedom fighters" around the world, including Angola.'

'But it is also very much the product of a firm called Black, Manafort, Stone, Kelley Inc. of Alexandria, Va., which opened the doors, set up the television and newspaper interviews, procured hotel rooms and limousines and stood ready, had the need arisen, to provide a private security detail to protect Mr. Savimbi in his visit.'

...

'According to one source, the Saudi Arabians, who are believed to have sent Mr. Savimbi considerable amounts of aid, have been urging him for several years to hire a Washington lobbying concern. That advice was underlined by Howard Phillips, a leading conservative activist, when he talked with Mr. Savimbi last July in Jamba, headquarters of Mr. Savimbi's South African-backed rebel movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, usually known as Unita after its Portuguese acronym.'

...

'On arrival, Mr. Savimbi was greeted not as a revolutionary without official status but with considerable panoply of state. Selwa Roosevelt, Chief of Protocol, met him as he stepped from a limousine escorted by Federal security agents at the State Department's diplomatic entrance.'

'Mr. Savimbi is also meeting with editors and reporters of major newspapers, including The New York Times, and with executives of news agencies. And he has appeared on such television programs as CBS News's "60 Minutes" and ABC News's "Nightwatch." At each opportunity, he sought to picture himself not as a friend of Pretoria but as the foe of the Soviet-backed Angolan troops and their Cuban allies.'

'In only two instances did Black, Manafort not get the access sought. Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., refused to se Mr. Savimbi, and so did the Congressional Black Caucus, which described him as a "surrogate for South Africa", hostile to the interests of blacks. But their dissenting voices were hardly audible over the media barrage.'(The New York Times, Friday, February 7, 1986)

Boy, was that Savimbi guy popular or what? And what was with those Congressional Black Caucus members, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and all those other African countries anyway? What party-poopers! However, Savimbi was unable to sustain his fame:

'...For UNITA, however, more than 20 years of nearly continuous guerrilla combat had seen it become dependent on the rural authority of traditional chiefs (sobas)[italics original] for local political support and contaminated by the atavistic practices of burning, dismembering, and drowning "witches" and "sorcerers" suspected of disloyalty. The movement internalized values and practices at sharp variance with the democratic credo it espoused when presenting itself to American and other Western patrons. A reverential cult had developed around UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, a consummate political survivor and sometime acolyte of Mao Zedong and South African President P.W. Botha. Initially hailed as an anti-Communist hero and later denounced as a brutish psychopath by his British biographer, Fred Bridgland, Savimbi said of himself, "When you speak of UNITA, you speak of Savimbi." UNITA radio referred to him regularly and grandiloquently as "Supreme Guide, Comrade, Dr. Jonas Malheiro Savimbi.'

'Evidence that a sinister malaise had taken hold of the movement mounted in 1989 when a popular UNITA Washington lobbyist, Tito Chingunji, fell from grace; he was recalled, tortured, placed under house arrest, and ultimately met his death at UNITA hands. His fate fit into a pattern of disappearances and deaths -- or for the more fortunate, defections -- among talented, Western-educated UNITA leaders such as Luciano Kassoma, Jorge Sangumba, Anito Vakulukuta, and Wilson dos Santos, to name some of the more prominent examples. Unable to conceive that a movement they still patronized as a champion of democracy might have become a brutalized and brutalizing perpetuator of war, UNITA's backers in the United States Congress rejected counsel that they investigate the guerrilla group and press it as well as the MPLA to reach a political accommodation.' (John Marcum, in Current History, Vol. 92 No. 574, May 1993)

Jonas Savimbi met his doom in February 2002, killed in combat after almost constant war with the government since 1976. A true rock star of "Freedom Fighters", Savimibi's death provoked great outpourings of feeling in Angola:

'Raucous celebrations in Luanda's poor neighbourhoods greeted the first reports of the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.'

'Red flares - presumably supplied by the military - lit up the sky over districts where electric light is a rarity. '

'People took to the road in cars and minibuses which travelled in procession, sounding their horns as people leant out of the windows, chanting and shouting.'

We'll be back with more hits after these messages...

2004-09-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

Hedge fund in the sky

If the words signified nothing, if they were so much clamor without meaning, than maybe we could brush it aside and sweep it under the political rug as one more empty promise. The problem is the words rolled off like threats that the President intends to keep: more regression in the newer "simpler" tax code -in other words making the poor pay for the government while the rich get fat off of it- Fewer high paying jobs, and more switching from entry level to entry level, less protection against corporate malfeasance, less security about our health and more blame on the people for that lack of security, the same goes for education -less help to get it , but more shame if you don't- and in the meantime there were more spending initiatives without correspondent revenue gathering (the dreaded "T" word). Fiscal irresponsibility coupled with social injustice spritzed with rosewater sounding words to cover the stench, this pretty much sums up the President's forward agenda if reelected.

If it were to turn out that there is a black-market derivative that's speculating on the collapse of the United States financial system, then there is a certain scary sensibility to all of this madness. Bretton Woods gone into its most hostile possible outcome. Certain players, those with close ties to oil and who hold large quantities of precious metals might make out alright. Especially if they had played the foreign currency market right. Most everything and everybody else would be in deep trouble. After the fall, scraps would be cheap and the best parts would be easily snapped up by the aforementioned oil and gold Hedgers. The ensuing new social order would ensure this new American gentry would have power over the lower classes for centuries. Wow, that would be absolutely mind blowing if I were a conspiracy theorist.

Alright, back to the real world. I just wanted to clarify and correct a couple of points about my last post. Richard Breeden, was the SEC director at the time of Bush's troubles with Harken and not Bush's lawyer, who was Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan is the current ambassador to Saudi Arabia and an appointee of the second Bush. Breeden was an appointee of the first Bush and an appointee of the second Bush. Odd that he should feel compelled to clear those charges. Jordan was a partner at Baker Botts before his appointment, Baker Botts is the law firm of James Baker III, who happens to be a major partner of the Carlyle Group with George H.W. Bush. Yet it clearly was my error to call Breeden Bush's lawyer when he was Bush's prosecutor and then appointee when Jordan was his lawyer and then appointee as well as recipients of favors from Bush's father.

Coincidentally enough, both Breeden and Jordan are experts in the field of laws concerning OTC (over the counter) or unregulated derivative markets. If anybody knew how to profit off of financial disater, these would be the fellows to ask.

2004-09-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

"I made 50 million bucks yesterday. That's a flame-out I could get used to." -- Conrad Black, after being forced out as CEO of media giant Hollinger International last November.

Andrew has already linked to the growing Hollinger International scandal, and so in that vein I will post another link to an interesting older article connecting the Right Wing media's biggest players, which include Hollinger, News Corp, and Reverend Moon's UPI, and how they have used their ties to the Vice-President to hijack U.S. foreign policy. The story here is deeper, and since major media players are involved the filters necessary to get to the bottom make it a very murky task indeed.

The whole thing seems fishy, from today's Wall Street Journal:

"Hollinger audit commitee member Richard Burt, a former U.S. amabassador to Germany said that 'I don't agree with the special committee's conclusions concerning the perfromance of the board,' and that ' in the course of its work, the special committee did not meet with me to discuss the board's performance, despite fact that I did ask to meet with the special committee.' He declined to elaborate."

Which seems innocuous until one considers Burt's current ties to the Carlyle Group and that it was Ronald Reagan who appointed him ambassador back in 1985. Burt is friends with James Baker, Donald Rumsfeld and other Neo-cons connected to Carlyle. The Carlyle group has expressed interest in buying some of Hollinger International's now deeply discounted assets and one would think after the Sarbanes-Oxley act that came in the wake of the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals that ties like Burt's would preclude him from being an audit committee member in the first place. If it stopped there, the story might just seem like some crackpot coincidence, but it doesn't.

Consider Andre Bisson, another Carlyle chum (currently a member of Carlyle Canada's advisory board) and shadowy magnate who abruptly resigned four days after being named a director and Hollinger audit committee member. According to Hollinger, Bisson resigned "due to a conflict." According to Bisson, he was never a director, despite a Hollinger press release that states otherwise.

Bisson might have known something that others didn't; Perle, Burt, Kissinger, and Marie-Josee Kravis have all been mentioned as possible defendants in a lawsuit by special committee chair Richard Breeden on behalf of Hollinger shareholders. And suddenly the mess gets more complicated. Richard Breeden is the same Richard Breeden who helped to clear a former Harken Energy executive of insider trading in 1991. Oh... what was that executive's name? It's on the tip of my tongue, George W. something or other. Breeden was then appointed by the president to be a sort of corporate watchdog, in a strange role reversal his first task was making sure Worldcom execs didn't shred evidence, but since he has taken this "tough on corporate wrong-doers" face while essentially doing very little.

Why is a former counsel of the President and current presidential appointee now threatening to sue the President's supposed friends? Why the timing of this release on the eve of the President's acceptance of his party's nomination? In looking at the substance of the report, the rhetoric has been ratcheted up, but the facts are the same as they have been for months. No new information of note came out with this. Maybe the President needs an outward sign that he's being tough on corporate crime. Kissinger and Perle have been relegated to the fringes and might be seen as potential liabilities, but Kravis? Marie-Josee is the wife of billionaire Henry Kravis, one of the famed Barbarians at the Gate who took over Nabisco in the eighties and a current Bush Pioneer who also helped with both of Bush Sr's campaigns.

Once again the murkiness of the story is manifest. One thing is for certain, the media is the least likely to be objective in this case, one way or the other, tread carefully my friends.

2004-09-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

More about Richard Perle here. He's been taken to the cleaners after a recent report on Hollinger International's financials revealed he was negligent of his duties and demanded that he return 5.4 million dollars in compensation from the company. From the article:

'Mr. Perle was chairman of Hollinger's Internet investing subsidiary, which lost lots of money. But he and other insiders had an unusual deal that gave them a share of profits from good investments without requiring those amounts to be offset by losses from bad investments.'

'Mr. Perle collected $3.1 million through that deal - payments that the committee said were not fully disclosed to shareholders, as they should have been. By the committee's account, Mr. Perle was responsible for $63.6 million in Hollinger investments, on which the company lost a net $49 million.'

'After the Internet boom collapsed, Mr. Perle persuaded Hollinger to invest in Trireme Partners, a venture capital firm that he helped found. He even signed, on Hollinger's behalf, the commitment letter for the investment.'

You may remember Trireme Partners from a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh.

2004-08-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

Treason.

2004-08-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Our own Bran gets the Prescient Post of The Year award. Back on July 20 (scroll down) he said:

'However, the question arises that if Swiss and New Zealander intelligence agencies can uncover Mossad rings, why haven't we heard about Israeli agents operating within US borders? Does anybody really believe that they aren't here?'

...

'That brings me back to Israel, operating the Mossad here as if it were another US intelligence agency, and my final question is, if the 9/11 panel gets its way and we do appoint an overarching head of all US intelligence agencies, shouldn't the Israelis report to him or her as well?'

-cough- Richard Perle -cough- We've since read that it's probably not Perle, but we like to pick on him anyway. He's the closest thing the Neo-conservatives have to a terrorist.

2004-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

This from Sports Illustrated, regarding the International Olympic Committee's objection to a new Bush campaign ad:

'[quote from the tv ad] "In 1972, there were 40 democracies in the world. Today, 120," an announcer says. "Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise. And this Olympics there will be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes."'

'Some of the players on the Iraqi Olympic soccer team have complained about the ad appearing as part of a political campaign.'

'Campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said last week there were no plans to pull the ad.'

'"We are on firm legal ground to mention the Olympics and make a factual point in a political advertisement," Stanzel said.'

We'd like to consider for a moment a bit of history:

'When Rep. Dick Cheney voted against a 1986 resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and recognition of the African National Congress, Americans did know this man had been waiting decades for his freedom. In a larger sense, so had all black South Africans. The tenets of American democracy -- one man, one vote -- were denied to the majority of citizens, along with the most basic economic and educational needs.'

'Yet Republican vice presidential candidate Cheney still defends his vote, saying on ABC's "This Week" that "the ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization [emphasis mine]. . . . I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago." What, then, does this tell us about what information Cheney considers before he takes a decision? And what the long-term consequences are likely to be, and on whom?'

'By no means were Mandela or the ANC universally viewed as "terrorists," evidenced by the fact that the vote on the resolution was 245-177 in favor, but still shy of the two-thirds needed to override President Ronald Reagan's veto.'

'Mandela and his longtime friend and colleague, ANC Secretary General Oliver Tambo, reflected deeply before advocating violence as even a limited tactic of the ANC. In a 1958 conversation with economist Winifred Armstrong, they reflected on their belief that "if you sow violence, you reap violence." Armstrong, who has lived, traveled and written extensively about Africa, noted that "Mandela and colleagues thought ahead, and considered the impacts on all of the players, not just the home team."'

'As South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has revealed, much to the consternation of all involved, the ANC's armed wing committed acts of violence, including bombings -- as did the government. In fact, while the United States maintained diplomatic ties with South Africa, former President P.W. Botha ordered the 1988 bombing of the South African Council of Churches in Johannesburg. Twenty-three people were injured. For decades, other government operatives did far worse, killing and maiming everyone from political activists to infants.'

'Mandela made choices no man should ever have to make about whether to lead a people into bloodshed for a just cause. In an interview with Time magazine shortly before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, Mandela said Chief Albert Luthuli, former ANC president and Nobel winner, "believed in nonviolence as a way of life. But we who were in touch with the grass-roots persuaded the chief that if we did not begin the armed struggle, then people would proceed without guidance."'

Aside from the issues of who is and who isn't a terrorist, we point out that the United States under various presidents did quite a bit to suppress freedom in Africa during the 1970's and 1980's because many of the organizations pushing for that freedom were viewed as both "terrorist" and "communist". The ANC, FRELIMO, SWAPO, UNITA, and a whole host of other organizations in Africa were actively opposed by the U.S. government, either through covert operations or overt support for their counterparts (the apartheid government in South Africa (which included Namibia at the time), UNITA, and RENAMO). I'm working on a project now to ressurect some of the more interesting tidbits from this period in U.S. history with respect to Africa and U.S. policy. Needless to say, the U.S. actively opposed freedom for a long time, labeling those who fought for it as "terrorists". This was true of both Democrats and Republicans (all were caught up in anti-communism). However the greatest amount of support came from a small group, on the right politically, who siezed on the anti-communism theme to promote their views and fund their operations. More to come...

2004-08-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

In the coming week there will be much trumpeting out of New York City about how America is getting safer, what's more we will hear how we are well along on the road to recovery and that soon, if we make the right choice in November prosperity and peace will wash over the entire Earth like a baptism from above. Well, something like that at least. The rhetoric will certainly have those religious overtones but pains will be made to not make the war on terrorism seem a holy war, even though references to good and evil will be invoked countless times. The speakers will present a falsely moderate front, like the Democrats tried to mute their fanatics, the Republicans will likewise attempt to limit the exposure of theirs. The truth of course is that in front of the podium, delegates will openly compare the protesters outside to terrorists plotting the destruction of our cities, and for their part, most of those protesters won't say a word when the President is openly reviled and degraded. False claims will abound in both circles and both will claim to be unfairly muted by the liberal media or the corporate media depending on which side of Madison Square Garden's walls they're on, and see their First Amendment rights being trampled by nefarious plotters with wads of cash.

The one issue the President can't get around and dodges questions about at every opportunity is the fractured state of America. Meanwhile, try as he might, John Kerry will never break through a certain wall with GOP voters and the one other thing that's clear is that the middle is shrinking. Andrew asked a month or so ago what it would take to make third parties or a multi-party system viable again in the United States, and right now it's harder than ever to see an apparent answer to that. I mean the short answer is that it would take several election cycles of broad losses by one party where the intraparty divisions would feel stronger striking out on their own. The dominant party could feel the opposite effect, a third party would break off with a significant chunk as did Ross Perot from the GOP in 1992. That election was a little different with voters not gleening many distinctions between the two major parties, they latched onto something different. At any rate, as close as these past two elections have been, and with much clearer delineation between the Republicans and Democrats, I feel that the trend will be to increasing partisanship for another decade.

2004-08-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

More on the Afghan mercenaries who where running their own jail, from the New York Times. Behold, spreading Democracy in action:

'Idema claims that he was operating on orders from the Pentagon: "We were in direct daily contact – by fax, e-mail or telephone – with the office of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld."'

'The government in Washington has vehemently denied these claims, and Idema, a former soldier with a noticeably military demeanor, has yet to provide evidence to support his claims. However, the US military in Kabul has been forced to concede that private mercenaries have been assisting regular American forces in their hunt for supporters of Osama bin Laden. Idema has delivered a prisoner to American forces "in at least one instance," says US military spokesman Major Jon Siepmann. "We receive prisoners from a large number of sources."'

A large number of sources, eh? It does make one wonder who exactly is out there arresting people in the name of lady liberty. Not to mention those doing the arresting aren't bound by the same legal standards as U.S. regular forces.

2004-08-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

A couple of paragraphs from the Prospect:

'Reviewing Clinton’s My Life in the June 24, 2004, Los Angeles Times, neoconservative Max Boot happily concluded that “conservatives like character, liberals like cleverness.” He’s right. But to state what should be obvious, the president is not your father, your husband, your drinking buddy, or your minister. These are important roles, but they are not the president’s. He has a job to do, and it’s a difficult one, involving a wide array of complicated issues. His responsibility to manage these issues is a public one, and the capacity to do so in a competent and moral manner is fundamentally unrelated to the private virtues of family, friendship, fidelity, charity, compassion, and all the rest.'

'For the president to lead an exemplary personal life is surely superior to the alternative. But within obvious limits -- no one would want an alcoholic president, for example -- it doesn’t really matter. Clinton’s indiscretions caused his family pain and produced awkward moments for the parents of some young children. But Bush’s bungling has gotten people killed in Iraq, saddled the nation with enormous debts, and created long-term security problems with which the country has not yet begun to grapple. '

2004-08-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've decided to instigate a project over the next couple of weeks. One of the Neoconservative's main goals for the war in Iraq was to spread Democracy. We at the Node were, to borrow a phrase, "present at the creation" (vicariously) and remember that most of the people championing this thesis were not quite so keen on spreading Democracy a couple of decades ago. I'm going to dig through my papers and find some of the more outstanding quotes and examples of how these guys fought against the spread of Democracy over the last twenty or so years. I think it's important that people know some of the history of actual spread of Democracy and that, to put it mildly, many of the people in the Bush administration tried their hardest to prevent it.

2004-08-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall poses the following questions:

'As the shrewdest thinkers on the left and the right concede on this issue, our true strategic challenges in the Muslim Middle East are not conventional military ones, but hearts-and-minds challenges. The trick is to figure out how we can solve or ameliorate that hearts-and-minds problem while simultaneously destroying the relatively small (in numerical terms) but highly lethal groups that constitute an imminent danger. Or, to put it more crisply, how do we wipe out al Qaida (and al Qaida-like groups) without generating so much bad blood in the Islamic world that the Islamic world keeps producing new al Qaidas faster than we can destroy them?'

'It's not clear to me necessarily what the best way to strike that balance is. But I think this is probably the worst way -- engaging in pitched battles with fighters who pose no direct danger to the US whatsoever in a way that does profound damage to our standing within the population that al Qaida and other similarly-inclined groups hope to do their recruiting.'

I agree that the current U.S. military strategy is the worst way to address the issue of both Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Here are some questions I'd ask before doing anything:

1.) What would someone living in, say, Egypt do to curtail the influence of extremists in their society?

2.) What would someone in Iraq do to curtail the influence and power of someone like Al-Sadr?

3.) What would someone in Afghanistan do to curtail the influence and power of the Taliban, the regional warlords, and Al-Qaeda?

4.) What does the Koran advise on the subject? What do moderate Shiite and Sunni clerics advise?

5.) Within the confines of international laws, how can this advice be applied to resolving the issue?

6.) What is it exactly that these extremist groups want? How does that differ from what moderate Muslims (both Shiite and Sunni) want? How is it similar?

I'll stop there, but it seems to my mind that The U.S. hasn't done anywhere near enough questioning to even begin fighting the "war on terrorism" effectively. The answers to these questions (and many others one could dream up, but I think these touch on most of the important points) will provide a picture of what a solution should look like. I don't pretend to know the answers to these questions, but they're the kind of questions I keep in the back of my mind while I read about these issues. I do think alot more thought needs to go into making a response to Islamic terrorism consistent with the laws of Islam, but with an eye towards the political issues that also affect the situation. I feel there are a myriad of issues involved -- personality, politics, money, religion, culture, etc. -- and that that complex calculus cannot be solved simply by bombing away at a particular threat.

One of my main beefs with contemporary international relations theory is theory. People have all sorts of pet theories to explain how the political world works. The U.S. has often made foreign policy decisions based on simplistic and highly inaccurate assumptions (one of my favorites is that all the Soviet "client" states (such as Cuba) were simply "pawns" of the Soviet Union). I'm seeing the same sort of patterns coming from the Bush white house and various influential "thinkers" of all stripes. It is very troubling that people put so little thought into their basic assumptions. That, incidentally, is the theory I apply to the Bush white house. Not that the Bush administration doesn't think, but that it hasn't done the groundwork necessary to gain a real understanding of terrorism. Until it does, my theory predicts that we'll continue to see bad policy coming from the Bush white house.

2004-08-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Julia Child

"People are afraid of French food because of all the cream and butter. But you don't see all those big fat people over there that you see lumbering around Disneyland." - Julia Child

2004-08-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

Last week President Bush had to heave a sigh of relief as far as press on his war o terrorism is concerned: suspects were captured throughout the world, the Democrats appeared weak and vacillating, Al Qaeda seemed so much on the run. The news was so good, in fact, that it counterbalanced the awful economic news that came out at the same time. Fresh off that success, this week has seen two new anti-terror messages, and the President, must be hoping for similar sympathy. He won't find it here. The two new terror warnings have been once again devolving into the general fearmonguering rather than the specific and credible threats of two weeks ago. What's more, while singling out helicopter tours and limousines as terror tools is good press to keep the public antsy and willing to support a cowboy ruler, they also represent a small fraction of the tourism/passenger transport market, and are thus unlikely to have much impact on cities' economies. This is where red flags go up in my mind. No matter the credibility of the information that led to these particular alerts, controlling these threats has little to do with public vigilence, and far more with cell infiltration on the part of federal agents. What's more, there is no precedent, and little detail about plans or intended targets. This is precisely the kind of press that Bush used in his run-up to gather support for the Iraq war, and precisely the kind of press we shouldn't be heeding.

2004-08-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, Rove-Cheney 2004 has kicked into full campaign mode, but unlike their last two contests, they actually have to be considered underdogs at this point. The Swift boat veterans commercial was the latest smear true, but watch for the White House to actually condemn the ad once they learn how damaging it plays over the next few days. Rove's tactics work best when his charge can claim high ground as the grunts do the dirty work, but after Cheney's foul-mouthed outburst on the Senate floor and the Republicans' whiny spin on the mostly positive Democratic convention and most of all a public still outraged by Abu Ghraib, this attack ad will be pinned directly to the President's campaign. After trying for months to paint the Democrats as a party of wild-eyed Bush haters, the visciousness felt by neo-cons toward the moderate left is finally beign exposed for its hypocrisy.

In the meantime, two other pertinent news items for today. I hate to say I told you so, but I did inform Node readers that the effects of the spike in oil prices would start to be felt most severely around the Democratic convention. Today's abysmal jobs announcement as well as yesterday's dismal retail results bear that out. The administration's economists failed to take into account the aftereffects of Russia's Yukos scandal, as well as unstable Middle East supplies yet again. Maybe they felt the handover of power would truly mean something to the Iraqis even though it didn't to the CPA. At any rate, with wages still rising slower than inflation (meaning the Fed has to raise interest rates again) and the likelihood of layoffs as capital spending freezes and consumer spending withers, the illusory recovery has run out of steam. Keep an eye out for any of three desperate moves by Bush in the next few weeks to stem the tide and further damage our economy: 1. releasing oil from the federal stockpiles (essentially throwing money away as they have spent great sums to build them up) 2. Ignoring inflation and pressuring Alan Greenspan to hold rates steady, or worse lower them again or 3. enact immediate tax-cut/spending measures to placate the masses. The last one certainly won't happen (although Republicans are already whispering the words "flat tax" when prepping for a second term) and Greenspan isn't stupid enough to lower rates, so maybe the most we could look for is further smears on John Kerry and his family.

2004-08-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

'The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which gets most of its funding from Texas Republican activists...'

Enough said -- Karl Rove. This smear campaign has his fingerprints all over it. Kids, it's time to put on your flack jackets 'cause we've got incoming, and it's not going to be pretty. The story also notes that the Bush campaign hasn't publicly condemned the ad, only stating that it wants to look to the "future" and that it believes John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. McCain's b.s. detector went off as well, as this is similar to the dirty tricks Rove sprung on him during the 2000 primaries (note: they also tried to make McCain look like a guy who got mad and couldn't control his temper. Do you remember? That's the "angry liberal" line employed for other means...).

Y'know, it's kind of an interesting strategy -- I think Rove and company might be aiming to make the Vietnam thing a nonissue by forcing it early in the campagin (i.e., before the Repub. convention). That way, by the time we get to November the whole issue will be a joke, a "oh, not another Kerry war story". Another purpose may be to force both candidates to just not talk about Vietnam, i.e. to "move on" from the candidate's war experiences and focus on the "future". Either way, they're trying to neutralize the Vietnam issue 'cause they know they'll lose it. The Democrats don't have to point out, for instance, the unsettlingly familiar arc -- patriot goes to war, gets wounded in action, then comes home and speaks out against the war. This is happening all across America right now, with troops returning [and being sent back only weeks later. How convenient... -ed] from Iraq. Kinda funny how these wars of choice inspire so much dissent.

So, here's your assignment. Actually, this was a strategy once suggested by Bran (I don't know if he remembers -- Bran, do you remember? Maybe you'd like to chime in). Get pictures of Karl Rove. Lots of 'em. Blow them up big and plaster them all over the place. Shine the light on the cockroaches, show the people who's in charge of Bush's campaign. Perhaps the artists in our audience can come up with some creative ideas.

2004-08-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

I will differ with Howard Dean and many others in my stance on the latest raising of the terrorist alert level and subsequent tightening of security around financial centers and the Capitol. Unlike Dean, I see little reason to doubt the intelligence behind this threat because it has several components lacking in previous attempts to scare the public for political gain. Chief among these is specificity of targets and a clearly delineated mode of operation that led to the alert. Democrats's quickness to jump to conclusions on this particular threat might not serve them as well as if they had used it to highlight the administration's previous abuses of the public trust.

Speaking of abuses of public trust, one wonders why the Republican backed Justice Department isn't making as big a stink over certain illegal mishandling of intelligence as they did over the unsubstantiated rumors of mishandling of intelligence by Sandy Berger. Hmm, maybe party affiliation has something to do with it.

2004-08-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day (from CNN):

"You can rest assured that with this system, when it finally is deployed, we will be very, very clear about what the intended uses are and what is clearly outside of bounds," said Marine Corps Capt. Daniel McSweeney, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. "It's not intended to be used as a torture device. That goes against all the design intentions and parameters."

"[D]esign" intentions and parameters change, no? CNN gets an honorary "Freudian Post Award" for having this story run on the same day lots of people are reading this.

2004-08-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

The U.S. is no longer supporting an inspection regime to verify compliance with a future nuclear weapons material production ban. I consider this interesting on two levels. First, the Bush Administration and the U.S. intelligence community were both hugely off the mark in comparison to intelligence gathered by the IAEA/UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. Despite this, it is still popular to cast the U.N. inspections as insufficient to "verify" whether or not Iraq possessed banned weapons. This is a glaring hole in the logic of the Bush administration and its supporters. The U.N. consistently had the best information (best here means most accurate) regarding Iraq's weapons capability -- what does it take for those involved to absorb this lesson? Now, when we examine the Administration's rationale for opposing an inspection regime we see the same arguments:

'. . .Administration officials said they made the decision after concluding such a system would cost too much, require overly intrusive inspections and wouldn't guarantee compliance with the treaty.'

I believe, and I believe this is supported by the data, that the U.N. would have certified Iraq to be free of banned weaponry if it had been allowed to complete its mission. The fact that the U.S. didn't let the U.N. complete its mission is a troublesome legal matter that the Administration is ignoring all together. I suppose the U.S. would rather not even have inspections in the first place so as to avoid this sort of sticky issue in the future.

This leads me to the second, and more disturbing, implication of the Administration's objections. Note the second reason given for the administration's position -- that the inspections would be "overly intrusive". Is the U.S. suddenly concerned about the sanctity of Iran's soverignty and its right to not submit to "overly intrusive inspections"? No, and that statement clearly implies that the _U.S._ doesn't want inspectors poking around its nuclear operations (and/or Israel's). Why, do you ask, is this disturbing? Aside from the implication that such inspections would be fruitful, I take our readers back to a tinfoil-hat theory I posited some time ago about reasons why the U.S. hasn't aggressively pursued Pakistan's proliferation efforts. At the time, I stated that I think the U.S. may have a stake in Pakistan's efforts (for whatever reason). That's what I thought of when I considered this news item, and while it's still an underdog theory it's likelihood of not being true has dropped from 99% to 90%. The chances, in other words, are one in ten that the U.S. government or U.S. corporations are playing the black-market nuclear proliferation game and would get caught if the U.N. started poking around too much.

2004-08-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

More on the Joshua Marshall story we mentioned a few weeks back. Apparently, the Iraq/Niger document trail leads straight back to the Italian intelligence service SISMI. The document's message was "amplified" by passing news about it through various channels; both through SISMI reports and through the distribution of the documents in such a way as to obscure their "source" as SISMI. We remind our readers that over a year ago Seymour Hersh floated the theory that the documents were ultimately a product of some rogue CIA agents who wanted to embarass the Bush administration (this was hinted at in Hersh's earlier article on the Niger documents). We'll continue to monitor news about the story as it becomes available.

2004-07-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

We're Running Away, and We're Not Coming Back

That's the new Bush campaign slogan. Well, not really, it's more like "we've turned a corner, and we're not turning back", but if I were them I'd not come back after the powerhouse week of speakers at the Democratic National Convention. My favorites included Clinton, Obama, and Teresa Heinz-Kerry. John Kerry said all sorts of things that needed to be said, and did so in a way that didn't sound shrill or out of touch. With respect to the "war on terrorism", he deviates from the Bush administration is several key areas. First, his standard of evidence for launching a war will be much higher. He didn't articulate an enemies list [you mean a shopping list -ed] like Bush did with his "Axis of Evil" speech. Instead, he made simple, positive statements about fighting terrorism. Unlike Bush, he didn't emphasise the idea of taking the fight to the terrorists. This was somewhat implied, I suppose, by his pledge for more special forces troops. However, the brunt of his attack was on the lack of funding for security measures in the U.S. This is a glaring oversight that the Bush administration can't simply wish away. We have the numbers, and the numbers show that local law enforcement and public safety units are underfunded and that the Feds aren't providing them with the money they were promised. Kerry also came right out and said that the U.S. needed to a.) gain energy independence so that b.) folks like the Saudi royal family won't have so much clout in shaping U.S. policy. It remains to be seen whether or not this can be accomplished, but I say the fact that a presidential candidate said it, in public at his nomination speech, is a step in the right direction.

We have some interesting things coming in the next couple of months. For starters, Seymour Hersh is writing a book about the Abu-Ghraib scandal. I've lost count of all the different investigations going on, but there are 94 cases of abuse in the millitary prison system (that we know about, anyway). There's a number of investigations into mismanagement of money by the CPA in Iraq. The Plame scandal is still up in the air. These are just the investigations I can remember off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a bunch I'm leaving out. Oh, we can't forget the interesting case of Sibel Edmunds which continues to not die, the most recent development being the conclusion of a Justice Department investigation (I think it was the DOJ) which found that she was fired, in part, for speaking out against the FBI.

In short, if I were President Bush I'd start running away. Now.

2004-07-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Corporate Candidate

I begin with a story that's partly true -- however, I don't remember the exact facts so we'll treat it as a fable. This is part story, part thought question:

There once was a small community comprising several towns in Africa. This community decided long ago to order its political affairs thusly; anyone could become "mayor" of the community. There were no patriarchs, no council that picked a leader, no elections. Instead, one could buy the office of mayor, which was offered for sale on a yearly basis. The price of the mayor's office was not fixed; rather, whoever offered the most money for it could buy it at the yearly sale. The proceeds from the sale went into public coffers to fund various community projects. As time progressed, this community demonstrated a marked ability to adapt to change. First it was production of rubber that produced wealth. The wealthiest man, therefore, was the man who could produce or control the production of the most rubber, and subsequently he bought the mayorship This man continued to buy the office of mayor until one day, a tobacco farmer from across town, who had worked and saved and grown his business was able to outbid the rubber farmer and he bought the mayor's office. He was subsequently bought out by a man who had a steel mill, and he was bought out of office by another man who learned how to make radios. (I stop here out of deference to a certain famous Foreign Service Entrance Exam question. If you know the question (as "the radio" is the answer), you get something for free. Maybe a candy bar.)

My question is, did they live happily ever after?

While pondering that question, ponder also the power of the 527 organizations and what it would take in American politics to have a multi-party system. Some food for thought as we start out into convention season...

2004-07-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

"a command climate that encourages behavior at the harsher end of the acceptable range of behavior towards detainees may unintentionally increase the likelihood of abuse."

Out here in the real world, us regular folks might construe that to mean something to the effect of "soldiers were told to torture people". Nice try, though.

...And while we're at it, we'd like to take a moment to say to the Bush administration that the ball is in your court now. Another successful terrorist attack in the U.S. isn't going to play out too well now that we have a large document telling us what ought to be fixed.

2004-07-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

As predicted, the Administration's eyes exceeded their budget when it came to their warmongering and in order to cover the shortfall before Congress ponies up more scratch, the Department of Defense is searching through sofa cushions, cutting into non-essential programs such as equipment upkeep to cover the difference. Meanwhile, to cover the other predicted shortfall, that of actual servicemen, the Army is sending them out as quickly as they are signing them up, which by my reckoning brings us one international crisis away -say a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or proof of Iranian support and complicity in September 11- from a reinstituted draft. Buy those tickets to Canada while their cheap, boys.

The acceleration of training of course leaves our troops little more prepared for battle than the Iraqi security forces, and inches us steps closer to our next Vietnam. However, it says here that the current President will abandon Iraq before a draft is needed or we get caught too deep. The miseries of the Iraqis will be seen as politically justifiable to save face. If Kerry wins? It's a tough call, he needs to be able to follow through on his pledge to get more help from the U.N. or he gets the unenviable role of Nixon to Bush's LBJ. How's that for twisted irony?

Though the draft remains speculation, the needs of our servicepeople and their families are real -since neither Halliburton nor George W. can be counted on to provide for them. If you're thinking of spending cash on one of those fashionable ribbon car magnets, please instead visit this site and put your money to better use.

2004-07-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

If you scroll down the page, you'll see I posted some time ago in big, bold letters the text "Iraqis will not be in control of Iraq after June 30. The June 30th handoff is nothing but a meaningless charade".

To wit, Robert Fisk ('A better and safer place'):

'. . .the US-appointed Iraqi government controls little of the land south of the capital. Only in the Sunni Muslim town of Mahmoudiya - where a car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi military recruiting centre last week - did I see Iraqi policemen.'

'They were in a convoy of 11 battered white pick-ups, pointing Kalashnikovs at the crowds around them, driving on to the wrong side of the road when they became tangled in a traffic jam, screaming at motorists to clear their path at rifle point. This was not a frightened American column - this was Iraq's own new blue-uniformed police force, rifles also directed at the windows of homes and shops and at the crowd of Iraqis which surged around them. In Iskanderia, I saw two gunmen near the road. I don't know why they bothered to stand there. The police had already left their post a few metres away.'

. . .

'"The Americans gave us a map and asked us which roads they could patrol," Sadr's right-hand man, the turbaned Sheikh Ali Smaisin, told me in the Najaf shrine yesterday. "I sat with the other members of the 'Beit Shia' (the Shia House, which combines a numberf local political groups, including the Dawa party) and we set out the roads on which the Americans would be permitted to make their patrols. This map was then returned to the American side and they accepted our choices for roads they could control."'

'I was not surprised. US forces are under so many daily guerrilla attacks that they cannot move by daylight along Highway 8 or, indeed, west of Baghdad through Falujah or Ramadi. Across Iraq, their helicopters can fly no higher than 100 metres for fear of rocket attack. Save for a solitary A1M1 Abrams tank on a motorway bridge in the Baghdad suburbs, I saw only one other US vehicle on the road yesterday: a solitary Humvee driving along a patrol road in Najaf agreed by the Mehdi Army. Three faraway Apache helicopters were hedge-hopping their way towards the Euphrates.'

'That the "muqawama" - the resistance - controls so many hundreds of square miles around Baghdad should be no great surprise. The new US-appointed government has neither the police nor the soldiers to retake the land. They announce martial laws and telephone tapping and bans on demonstrations and a new intelligence service -- but have neither the manpower nor the ability to turn these institutions into anything more than propaganda dreams for foreign journalists and a population that desperately craves security.'

. . .

'So much, then, for the Allawi government, even if the Shia insurrection is a shadow of the Sunni version. But the evidence of my journey yesterday - through the southern Sunni cities which long ago rejected American rule, to the holiest Shia city where its own militia controls the shrines and the square miles around them - suggested that Mr Allawi controls a capital without a country.'

As the battle over intelligence, Niger, federal crimes, and crass politics plays out in the U.S., it is worth noting that Iraq has become a divided land, or as Fisk calls it "Afghanistan MK2". The central govenrment controls the capital (sort of) while the outliers are a no-mans-land owned by whomever has the most weight. These sorts of environments (read Somalia, Afghanistan) are the perfect place for terrorism to fester. We note, for instance, that the only terrorist organization in Iraq operating before the war was located in the Kurdish-controlled region in the North. Saddam's Iraq didn't have this (the state mechanisms of terror were quite enough), and we're hearing reports from Iraq that some Iraqis don't seem to mind Allawi's murderous ways. With the number of lawless, uncontrollable states increasing under the Bush administration we have to ask if America is actually safer as a result of their wars.

2004-07-20T05:40:00.000-07:00

As an addendum to Andrew's post on Friday: apparently, Switzerland isn't the only country taking stock of foreign agents operating within its borders. What's interesting to me about the cases of Mossad agents in both New Zealand and Switzerland, are the facts that neither of these countries would seem to merit much of a threat to Israel. In fact, the Sharon administration has dismissed New Zealand's concerns as minor, coming from a country of minor global significance. The crimes these alleged (and in the Swiss case, confessed) agents are accused of committing furthermore indicate that these actions were just initial steps in larger operations. Now, in saying this I want to be explicit that these actions are in all likelihood designed to counter Palestinian fund-raising and weapons smuggling programs and shouldn't be taken to indicate a broader "Protocols of Zion" type of conspiracy espoused by ignorant anti-semites. However, the question arises that if Swiss and New Zealander intelligence agencies can uncover Mossad rings, why haven't we heard about Israeli agents operating within US borders? Does anybody really believe that they aren't here?

Here is my suggestion: The tangled web of the GOP's complicity with oil based interests in the Middle East grows ever more ghastly. Israel is propped up to divert Islam's attention away from the United States' oil concerns running a cartel like distribution system. Just like drug runners, the Bushes, Cheneys, and their greedy friends don't really care about the casualty list as long as the bottom line keeps pouring in. In exchange, Israel gets a free pass to conduct intelligence operations within the United States, Britain, and probably Germany. Also, the Saudi elite get pampered treatment and US protection for their regimes. Similar setups are probably already in place in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, with Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq soon to join the club. The dilemma for the administration is the latter two have to have a semblance of democracy -at least at first- in order to be convincing to our own voters.

Right now, the Bush administration is keeping this farce alive by claiming progress toward elections is being made, but continually pushing the dates back. To hold free and fair elections in these countries by our own November polling time would be impossible in either case. Indonesia has finally held Presidential elections for the first time nearly a decade after Megawatti Sukarnoputri took office and promised democratic reform. Former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states also have struggled, with many of the early "successes" of democracy, such as Georgia (until recently) and Russia itself, proving to be anything but. Within our own country, Florida has had four years to fix its polling since the 2000 elections but still might not be ready in time for November. California likewise endeavored to overhaul its system but has had to concede the changes won't be ready in time. And yet we expect two nations starting from scratch to be able to deliver democracy in a few months? The claims were as preposterous as any statements made by the administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, and yet haven't been realistically challenged or questioned because for some reason many Americans are still under the impression that they should trust the office of the Presidency.

That brings me back to Israel, operating the Mossad here as if it were another US intelligence agency, and my final question is, if the 9/11 panel gets its way and we do appoint an overarching head of all US intelligence agencies, shouldn't the Israelis report to him or her as well?

2004-07-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times, an article titled "Tiny Agency's Iraq Analysis Is Better Than Big Rivals'":

. . .

'Almost alone among intelligence agencies, this one, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or I.N.R., does not report to either the White House or the Pentagon. Its approach is purely analytical, so that it owes no allegiance to particular agents, imagery or intercepts. It shuns the worst-case plans sometimes sought by military commanders.'

'"They are willing to take on the accepted analysis and take a second, harder look," said Alfred Cumming, a former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is now an intelligence and national security specialist at the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress.'

We know of another "small" intelligence outfit that also specialized in "second, harder look[s]". Continuing on:

. . .

'Altogether, the team of State Department analysts most directly involved in assessing Iraq's political structure, economy, conventional military forces and supposed illicit weapons numbered no more than 10 people, said State Department officials, but many had more than a decade of experience in the subjects on which they were focusing.'

'Those officials refused to identify the analyst whose dissent on Iraq's nuclear program proved particularly prescient, but said the official had worked on the subject for more than 12 years under a supervisor who had twice as many years of expertise.'

'As an example of the kind of analyst the State Department bureau embraces, the State Department officials pointed to Thomas Fingar, who was Mr. Ford's principal deputy and is awaiting Senate confirmation to lead the bureau as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. Mr. Fingar has spent 19 years at the bureau, having been recruited from Stanford University, where he had spent the previous decade as a political scientist.'

We note, with interest, several commonalities among these analyists:

1.) They have real intellectual bonafides.

2.) They have experience in the area in question, and more specifically they have experience with the issues in question (i.e., nuclear weapons proliferation).

3.) They have a healthy amount of skepticism.

In other words, these folks are professionals. It's a lesson the current administration would do well to learn.

2004-07-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

From the UPI, an interesting twist in an international espionage case:

'. . . Switzerland's Deputy Federal Prosecutor Felix Baenziger has demanded a 15-month sentence for Mossad spy Issac Bental, who admitted installing illegal wiretap equipment, but his defense lawyers said he should be acquitted because he was trying to prevent terror attacks. Bental's lawyers agreed with the prosecution that Bental was in a team of five Mossad agents who were apprehended while installing surveillance equipment in the basement of an apartment building near Bern in February 1998 to monitor Lebanese Abdallah el-Zein. Local police released the other four agents after questioning. Bental was transferred to the federal police because he had a diplomatic bag containing the tools being used. After 65 days in jail, which would be counted as time served, Bental was released on $2 million bail on the assurances of the Israeli government that he would return for trial. Bental said the three charges against him ware [sic] true -- that he acted illegally for a foreign country, conducted political espionage and repeatedly used false foreign identity documents. Defense attorney Ralph Zloczower called his client "a simple agent, without any noteworthy special functions or position."'

The U.S., apparently, isn't the only state pursuing police actions against terrorists in other countries. As the U.S. has opened the spigot for questioning current legal standards in light of the threat posed by international terrorism, we await with interest the day that this same scenario happens in the U.S. How would the Bush Administration treat, for instance, a Brazilian spy who was caught tapping phone lines in the U.S. but who claimed he did it while "fighting terrorism"?

2004-07-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of paragraphs from today's online edition of The Register:

'The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), in a new report, has again expressed its feeling of "embarrassment and disgust" over the way the Bush administration uses - or misuses - science when making policy decisions. The scientists have found that the administration often ignores the recommendations of advisory panels and "suppresses, distorts and manipulates" scientific work. In particular, the group is concerned about Bad Science affecting environment, emergency contraception and endangered species policies.'

'UCS issued a previous complaint in February with 62 signatures but has amassed over 4,000 signatures for its latest report released this month. The signers include 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences.'

'"The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies," UCS said. "Not only does the public expect and deserve government to provide it with accurate information, the government has a responsibility to ensure that policy decisions are not based on intentionally or knowingly flawed science. To do so carries serious i'mplications for the health, safety, and environment of all Americans."'

War is a scientific undertaking. It requires precision, accuracy, loads of observations, and an adaptability of tactics to the "data" at hand. I am particularly suspicious of what this total disregard for science and the scientific method portends for the fight against terrorism. Putting aside my objections to the war, the war itself has been fought on shaky principles, based on bad science and poor research. Making U.S. troops, for instance, enter battle with tons of unecessary chemical and biological weapons gear was a minor, but preventable, miscalculation based on bad science. Bad science let to U.S. forces focusing on the search for WMDs and chemical/biological weapons while the Iraqi insurgence was looting its way to military effectiveness. U.S. forces haven't lost a single soldier to chemical or biological weapons. The same can't be said about casualties caused by IEDs that use looted artillery shells and other weapons. Where did the insurgency get rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars? If the U.S. continues to make errors like this, the terrorists really have won.

2004-07-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

From Robert Fisk, writing for the Independent:

. . .'But Saleh [Saleh Mohamed Fawzi, a former member of the Iraqi Republican Guard] was sent back into the Iraqi army, this time to the northern city of Irbil. "I hated it. I did not want to fight any more. So I ran away again. You know the punishment for desertion is death but I refuse to fight. It is a sin for a Muslim to kill. So I came home again and eventually I managed to bribe some officers to take my name off the conscript list. I didn't meet the officers. There was a money-agent who bribed officers for soldiers who had deserted. It cost me about 12,000 dinars (£400) and my wife sold all her family gold to get the money."'

. . .

'"Our Imam Ali said that a man is either our brother in religion or our brother in humanity and we believe this. You must live with all men in perfect peace. You don't need to fight him or kill him. You know something; Islam is a very easy religion, but some radicals make it difficult. We are against anyone who is killing or kidnapping foreigners. This is not the Muslim way. The Grand Marjas (religious teachers) have told us this."'

The real struggle in global politics is, as I see it, a struggle of moderates against extremists. The extremists, be they Neoconservatives, militant Jews living in the settlements, Islamic militants, or other forms of terrorists and thugs, are striving to gain power around the world. Their worldviews are all quite similar; power rules absolutely, because power keeps us safe from some fictitious enemy who's plotting to kill innocent civilians at every turn. There is often a religious dimension to the dementia, some sort of justification for turning everything upside-down. It's like a comic book or superhero movie, and it's not real. The reality is the world mostly contains folks like Saleh. There are real dangers, obviously, from terrorists and ultra-conservative Republicans alike, but these can be dealt with normally. There is no need to overthrow the roots of Democracy because some ill-defined "enemy" chooses not to play by the rules. My motto, and one which I hope will prove its usefulness in the upcoming political firestorms, is "let cooler heads prevail".

2004-07-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

We feel that this is an appropriate time to revisit a goodie out of the New Yorker vaults, Seymour Hersh's article "The Stovepipe". Maximum fun is to be had comparing the article with the conclusions of the recent Senate inquiry.

2004-07-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

...Wow, this gets even more interesting (the Dave Tompkins story, that is):

'Central to Tomkins' defence as he remains in a Miami prison cell after being refused bail is the question of why the charges against him, filed in secret in 1994, were not acted upon for nine years.'

'Only when he attempted to visit the US last year - arriving on a flight from London to Houston, where he planned to attend a military-run survival training course in preparation for a security job with a firm involved in Iraq's reconstruction - was he arrested.'

I wonder if he was going to a seminar put on by SGC? They do that sort of thing...

...Perhaps the Node ought to sign up for their "Terrorist Intelligence Gathering Techniques (4 Days)" (see the link above). A steal at $500, we say.

2004-07-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

This sounds all too familiar. A very strange story, indeed.

2004-07-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

Speaking of electioneering, David Callaway of CBS' Marketwatch website brings up some interesting points about the timing of Ken Lay's perp walk. Keep in mind that federal prosecutors have had a case against Lay for months, at least since Andy Fastow caved. The administration is trying to walk the thin line between not being seen as soft on greedy corporate executives and not revealing the extent to which Cheney pandered to these energy execs in developing the Energy Department's regressive policies. Furthering the cause is the White House press corps in a seperate news brief on the site:

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Following the indictment of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay on 11 federal criminal charges, the Bush administration distanced itself Thursday from a long-time political suporter. At one time, Lay was President Bush's top career politicial patron, earning himself the nickname of "Kenny Boy" from a grateful Bush. On Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush and Lay were never particularly close, saying the two had not spoken "in quite some time." Lay "is a past supporter," McClellan emphasized to reporters. McClellan said the White House took no role in the indictment. "Cracking down on corporate wrongdoing is a top priority for this president," the spokesman said. Bush has always been most concerned for the workers and shareholders, he said.

The betrayal will no doubt bring out much in the way of damaging evidence against Bush, watch for federal prosecutors to quickly move to prevent such leaks to the media by whatever means available.

Of course Bush's "concern" for workers and shareholders can be seen in the effects his administration has had on both, over a million net jobs lost and stock prices that are still on average nearly 20 percent down from the day he took office, this despite assurances that he has stewarded America to a robust recovery.
And what of that recovery? As I and many others predicted, now that the fed has finally decided to stop giving money away and raise rates, the wheels are coming off. Worse, after losing their savings in the stock market, Americans should prepare to also start losing in property value now that the cost of mortgages will begin to normalize. Though I'm not quite as pessimistic about the impending burst of the real estate bubble as The New Yorker's John Cassidy in this comment on Alan Greenspan, I am nonetheless certain that America two years from now will be in far worse financial shape than it is today thanks entirely to President Bush's policies.

Which brings me to my final point, the election for 2008 will almost certainly focus on the coming economic doldrums with a lot of finger pointing as to who deserves the most blame. If Bush wins this November, the GOP will have a hard time convincing voters it was the Democrats' fault, opening the door for a second Clintonian era. However, if Kerry wins, the coming dip will need to be short for the Dems to hold onto flip-flopping public opinion. Either way, don't expect to hear either candidate talk frankly about the storm clouds on the horizon in this campaign, but instead expect to hear the usual rosy promises that neither candidate will be able to fully keep.